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 O. GROTBIAN*.

THIS

HIS 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 exceptions, have not been referred to a sufficiently defined unit; 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 thirtyfive 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 hydrochlorict. We now add nitric acid, about the electri

* Translated from an abstract, communicated by the Authors, in the Nachrichten von der königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, No. 17, August 5, 1874.

† Nachrichten, 1868, p. 415; Pogg. Ann. vol. cli. Phil. Mag. S. 4. Vol. 49. No. 327. June 1875.

2 G