THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



JUNE 1875. 



XLVIII. On the Electric Conducting -power of the Chlorides of 

 the Alkalies, Alkaline Earths, and Nitric Acid in Aqueous 

 Solutions. By F. Kohlrausch and 0. Grotrian*. 



THIS memoir is to form the commencement of a systematic 

 experimental investigation of the work of the current in 

 the interior of electrolytes. In order to arrive at laws in this 

 obscure department, the first requisite is a detailed inquiry into 

 the facts. For the materials we possess are very imperfect, and 

 for the most part inexact ; and the measurements, with few ex- 

 ceptions, have not been referred to a sufficiently defined unit j so 

 that up to the present only a slender basis is afforded for more 

 general points of view. Thus much, however, is already known, 

 that the relations are by no means simple ; and accordingly, in 

 order to analyze them, it will be advisable to commence with 

 simple chemical combinations and examine these in groups. 



On this account we have operated first upon the chlorides of 

 the alkalies and alkaline earths. The observations refer to thirty^- 

 five different solutions of them, and show the dependence of the 

 conducting-power on the amount of salt contained, and on the 

 temperature from 0° to 40° C. Chloride of lithium is the only 

 one that was examined merely in very dilute solutions. 



Of the acids, we have previously experimented on sulphuric 

 and hydrochloric j\ We now add nitric acid, about the electri- 



* Translated from an abstract, communicated by the Authors, in the 

 Nachrichten von der Jconigl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, 

 No. 17, August 5, 1874. 



t Nachrichten, 1868, p. 415; Pogg. Ann. vol. cli. 

 Phil. Mag, S. 4. Vol. 49. No. 327. June 1875. 2G 



