Notices of the proceedings at the meetings of the members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain with abstracts of the discourses . f the insu-lating support on a piece of metalwhich was at a higher potentialthan the gold leaves. Any failurein the insulation would thencause the leaves to diverge morethan at [first. It was found,however, that in fact the leavescollapsed in the course of a fewhours. There could, therefore,be no doubt whatever that thecharge was escaping through theair. I have here an experimentwhich shows the same thing,though perhaps not quite so satis-factorily. There are t
Notices of the proceedings at the meetings of the members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain with abstracts of the discourses . f the insu-lating support on a piece of metalwhich was at a higher potentialthan the gold leaves. Any failurein the insulation would thencause the leaves to diverge morethan at [first. It was found,however, that in fact the leavescollapsed in the course of a fewhours. There could, therefore,be no doubt whatever that thecharge was escaping through theair. I have here an experimentwhich shows the same thing,though perhaps not quite so satis-factorily. There are two pairs of gold leaves, a, b (Fig. 1), in allrespects similar. These are supported by clean ebonite insulators,c, d, exactly alike for each. The left-hand pair, however, hangsimmediately from the ebonite support, while the right-hand onehangs from the support by a long wire e. The right-hand chargedsystem, therefore, has much better access to the air than the left-handone. And in the course of half-an-hour you will see that its leaveshave collapsed much further, in spite of its greater electrical XVII. (No. 97.) x. Fig. 1. 296 The Hon. B. J. Strutt [April 24, Mr. Wilson made a series of measurements of this electrical leakagethrough various gases, and he came to the interesting conclusionthat the rates of leak were in the same ratio to one another as thosewhich I had found for the same gases under the action of Becquerelrays. As a rule, the leakages were proportional to the densities ofthe gases, but as in the case of Becquerel rays, hydrogen was an ex-ception, giving about twice as great a leakage as it ought to, ifthis law were exactly obeyed. This curious agreement naturally suggestedthat the leakage ordinarily occurring was dueto the same cause as the leakage under Bec-querel rays. In other words, that the walls ofthe vessel containing the electroscope weregiving off rays of this kind, although of courseonly to a very slight extent. In order to testwhether th
Size: 1657px × 1507px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorroyalins, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookyear1851
