It may be of interest to introduce one further table ([Table VII]) arranged in a slightly different way to show how infallibly the atomic structure of electricity follows from experiments like those under consideration.
[TABLE VII]
| Observed Charge | Observed Charge | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4.917 | ----- | 10 | 49.17 | 49.41 |
| 2 | 9.834 | ----- | 11 | 54.09 | 53.91 |
| 3 | 14.75 | ----- | 12 | 59.00 | 59.12 |
| 4 | 19.66 | 19.66 | 13 | 63.92 | 63.68 |
| 5 | 24.59 | 24.60 | 14 | 68.84 | 68.65 |
| 6 | 29.50 | 29.62 | 15 | 73.75 | ----- |
| 7 | 34.42 | 34.47 | 16 | 78.67 | 78.34 |
| 8 | 39.34 | 39.38 | 17 | 83.59 | 83.22 |
| 9 | 44.25 | 44.42 | 18 | 88.51 | ----- |
In this table 4.917 is merely a number obtained precisely as above from the change in speed due to the capture of ions and one which is proportional in this experiment to the ionic charge. The column headed
contains simply the whole series of exact multiples of this number from 1 to 18. The column headed “Observed Charge” gives the successive observed values of (
). It will be seen that during the time of observation, about four hours, this drop carried all possible multiples of the elementary charge from 4 to 18, save only 15. No more exact or more consistent multiple relationship is found in the data which chemists have amassed on the combining powers of the elements and on which the atomic theory of matter rests than is found in the foregoing numbers.
Such tables as these—and scores of them could be given—place beyond all question the view that an electrical charge wherever it is found, whether on an insulator or a conductor, whether in electrolytes or in metals, has a definite granular structure, that it consists of an exact number of specks of electricity (electrons) all exactly alike, which in static phenomena are scattered over the surface of the charged body and in current phenomena are drifting along the conductor. Instead of giving up, as Maxwell thought we should some day do, the “provisional hypothesis of molecular charges,” we find ourselves obliged to make all our interpretations of electrical phenomena, metallic as well as electrolytic, in terms of it.
III. MECHANISM OF CHANGE OF CHARGE OF A DROP