Footnotes to Chapter 5
[1] Buff finds the quantity of electricity associated with one
milligramme of hydrogen in water to be equal to 45,480 charges of a
Leyden jar, with a height of 480 millimetres, and a diameter of 160
millimetres. Weber and Kohlrausch have calculated that, if the
quantity of electricity associated with one milligramme of hydrogen
in water were diffused over a cloud at a height of 1000 metres above
the earth, it would exert upon an equal quantity of the opposite
electricity at the earth's surface an attractive force of 2,268,000
kilogrammes. (Electrolytische Maasbestimmungen, 1856, p. 262.)
[2] Faraday, sa Vie et ses Travaux, p. 20.
Chapter 6.
Laws of electro-chemical decomposition.
In our conceptions and reasonings regarding the forces of nature,
we perpetually make use of symbols which, when they possess a high
representative value, we dignify with the name of theories. Thus,
prompted by certain analogies, we ascribe electrical phenomena to
the action of a peculiar fluid, sometimes flowing, sometimes at
rest. Such conceptions have their advantages and their
disadvantages; they afford peaceful lodging to the intellect for a
time, but they also circumscribe it, and by-and-by, when the mind
has grown too large for its lodging, it often finds difficulty in
breaking down the walls of what has become its prison instead of its
home.[1]
No man ever felt this tyranny of symbols more deeply than Faraday,
and no man was ever more assiduous than he to liberate himself from
them, and the terms which suggested them.
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