I wonder whether we shall be too deep to-day or not. Remember that we
spoke of the attraction by gravitation of _all_ bodies to all bodies
by their simple approach. Remember that we spoke of the attraction of
particles of the _same_ kind to each other,--that power which keeps
them together in masses,--iron attracted to iron, brass to brass, or
water to water. Remember that we found, on looking into water, that
there were particles of two different kinds attracted to each other;
and this was a great step beyond the first simple attraction of
gravitation; because here we deal with attraction between _different_
kinds of matter. The hydrogen could attract the oxygen, and reduce
it to water, but it could not attract any of its own particles; so
that there we obtained a first indication of the existence of _two_
attractions.
To-day we come to a kind of attraction even more curious than the last,
namely, the attraction which we find to be of a double nature--of a
curious and dual nature. And I want first of all to make the nature
of this doubleness clear to you. Bodies are sometimes endowed with a
wonderful attraction, which is not found in them in their ordinary
state. For instance, here is a piece of shell-lac, having the
attraction of gravitation, having the attraction of cohesion; and if I
set fire to it, it would have the attraction of chemical affinity to
the oxygen in the atmosphere. Now, all these powers we find _in_ it
as if they were parts of its substance; but there is another property
which I will try and make evident by means of this ball, this bubble of
air [a light india-rubber ball, inflated and suspended by a thread].
There is no attraction between this ball and this shell-lac at present:
there may be a little wind in the room slightly moving the ball about,
but there is no attraction. But if I rub the shell-lac with a piece of
flannel [rubbing the shell-lac, and then holding it near the ball],
look at the attraction which has arisen out of the shell-lac, simply
by this friction, and which I may take away as easily by drawing
it gently through my hand. [The Lecturer repeated the experiment of
exciting the shell-lac, and then removing the attractive power by
drawing it through his hand.] Again, you will see I can repeat this
experiment with another substance; for if I take a glass rod and rub
it with a piece of silk covered with what we call amalgam, look at the
attraction which it has, how it draws the ball towards it; and then, as
before, by quietly rubbing it through the hand, the attraction will be
all removed again, to come back by friction with this silk.
[Illustration: Fig. 33.]
But now we come to another fact. I will take this piece of shell-lac
and make it attractive by friction; and remember that whenever we get
an attraction of gravity, chemical affinity, adhesion, or electricity
(as in this case), the body which attracts is attracted also; and just
as much as that ball was attracted by the shell-lac, the shell-lac
was attracted by the ball. Now, I will suspend this piece of excited
shell-lac in a little paper stirrup, in this way (fig. 33), in order
to make it move easily, and I will take another piece of shell-lac,
and after rubbing it with flannel, will bring them near together. You
will think that they ought to attract each other; but now what happens?
It does not attract; on the contrary, it very strongly _repels_, and
I can thus drive it round to any extent. These, therefore, repel each
other, although they are so strongly attractive--repel each other to
the extent of driving this heavy piece of shell-lac round and round
in this way. But if I excite this piece of shell-lac, as before, and
take this piece of glass and rub it with silk, and then bring them
near, what think you will happen? [The Lecturer held the excited glass
near the excited shell-lac, when they attracted each other strongly.]
You see, therefore, what a difference there is between these two
attractions,--they are actually two _kinds_ of attraction concerned in
this case, quite different to anything we have met with before; but the
_force_ is the same. We have here, then, a double attraction--a dual
attraction or force--one attracting, and the other repelling.
Again, to shew you another experiment which will help to make this
clear to you. Suppose I set up this rough indicator again [the excited
shell-lac suspended in the stirrup]--it is rough, but delicate enough
for my purpose; and suppose I take this other piece of shell-lac, and
take away the power, which I can do by drawing it gently through the
hand; and suppose I take a piece of flannel (fig. 34), which I have
shaped into a cap for it and made dry. I will put this shell-lac into
the flannel, and here comes out a very beautiful result. I will rub
this shell-lac and the flannel together (which I can do by twisting the
shell-lac round), and leave them in contact; and then, if I ask, by
bringing them nearer our indicator, what is the attractive force?--it
is nothing! But if I take them apart, and then ask what will they do
when they are separated--why, the shell-lac is strongly repelled, as it
was before, but the cap is strongly attractive; and yet if I bring them
both together again, there is no attraction--it has all disappeared
[the experiment was repeated]. Those two bodies, therefore, still
contain this attractive power: when they were parted, it was evident to
your senses that they had it, though they do not attract when they are
together.
[Illustration: Fig. 34.]
[Illustration: Fig. 35.]
This, then, is sufficient in the outset to give you an idea of the
nature of the force which we call ELECTRICITY. There is no end to the
things from which you can evolve this power. When you go home, take
a stick of sealing-wax--I have rather a large stick, but a smaller
one will do--and make an indicator of this sort (fig. 35). Take a
watch-glass (or your watch itself will do; you only want something
which shall have a round face), and now, if you place a piece of
flat glass upon that, you have a very easily moved centre. And if I
take this lath and put it on the flat glass (you see I am searching
for the centre of gravity of this lath--I want to balance it upon
the watch-glass), it is very easily moved round; and if I take this
piece of sealing-wax and rub it against my coat, and then try whether
it is attractive [holding it near the lath], you see how strong the
attraction is; I can even draw it about. Here, then, you have a very
beautiful indicator, for I have, with a small piece of sealing-wax
and my coat, pulled round a plank of that kind; so you need be in
no want of indicators to discover the presence of this attraction.
There is scarcely a substance which we may not use. Here are some
indicators (fig. 36). I bend round a strip of paper into a hoop, and
we have as good an indicator as can be required. See how it rolls
along, travelling after the sealing-wax. If I make them smaller, of
course we have them running faster, and sometimes they are actually
attracted up into the air. Here also is a little collodion balloon. It
is so electrical that it will scarcely leave my hand unless to go to
the other. See, how curiously electrical it is: it is hardly possible
for me to touch it without making it electrical; and here is a piece
which clings to anything it is brought near, and which it is not easy
to lay down. And here is another substance, gutta-percha, in thin
strips: it is astonishing how, by rubbing this in your hands, you make
it electrical. But our time forbids us to go further into this subject
at present. You see clearly there are two kinds of electricities which
may be obtained by rubbing shell-lac with flannel, or glass with silk.
[Illustration: Fig. 36.]
Now, there are some curious bodies in nature (of which I have
two specimens on the table) which are called _magnets_ or
_loadstones_--ores of iron, of which there is a great deal sent from
Sweden. They have the attraction of gravitation, and attraction of
cohesion, and certain chemical attraction; but they also have a great
attractive power, for this little key is held up by this stone.
Now, that is not chemical attraction,--it is not the attraction of
chemical affinity, or of aggregation of particles, or of cohesion, or
of electricity (for it will not attract this ball if I bring it near
it); but it is a separate and dual attraction--and, what is more, one
which is not readily removed from the substance, for it has existed
in it for ages and ages in the bowels of the earth. Now, we can make
artificial magnets (you will see me to-morrow make artificial magnets
of extraordinary power). And let us take one of these artificial
magnets, and examine it, and see where the power is in the mass, and
whether it is a dual power. You see it attracts these keys, two or
three in succession, and it will attract a very large piece of iron.
That, then, is a very different thing indeed to what you saw in the
case of the shell-lac; for _that_ only attracted a light ball, but here
I have several ounces of iron held up. And if we come to examine this
attraction a little more closely, we shall find it presents some other
remarkable differences: first of all, one end of this bar (fig. 37)
attracts this key, but the middle does not attract. It is not, then,
the _whole_ of the substance which attracts. If I place this little
key in the middle, it does not adhere; but if I place it _there_, a
little nearer the end, it does, though feebly. Is it not, then, very
curious to find that there is an attractive power at the extremities
which is not in the middle--to have thus in one bar two places in which
this force of attraction resides! If I take this bar and balance it
carefully on a point, so that it will be free to move round, I can
try what action this piece of iron has on it. Well, it attracts one
end, and it also attracts the other end, just as you saw the shell-lac
and the glass did, with the exception of its not attracting in the
middle. But if now, instead of a piece of iron, I take a _magnet_, and
examine it in a similar way, you see that one of its ends _repels_
the suspended magnet--the force then is no longer attraction, but
repulsion; but if I take the other end of the magnet and bring it near,
it shews attraction again.
[Illustration: Fig. 37. and Fig. 38.]
You will see this better, perhaps, by another kind of experiment. Here
(fig. 38) is a little magnet, and I have coloured the ends differently,
so that you may distinguish one from the other. Now this end (S) of
the magnet (fig. 37) attracts the _uncoloured_ end of the little
magnet. You see it pulls it towards it with great power; and as I carry
it round, the uncoloured end still follows. But now, if I gradually
bring the middle of the bar magnet opposite the uncoloured end of the
needle, it has no effect upon it, either of attraction or repulsion,
until, as I come to the opposite extremity (N), you see that it is the
_coloured_ end of the needle which is pulled towards it. We are now
therefore dealing with two kinds of power, attracting different ends
of the magnet--a double power, already existing in these bodies, which
takes up the form of attraction and repulsion. And now, when I put up
this label with the word MAGNETISM, you will understand that it is to
express this double power.
Now, with this loadstone you may make magnets artificially. Here is
an artificial magnet (fig. 39) in which both ends have been brought
together in order to increase the attraction. This mass will lift
that lump of iron; and, what is more, by placing this _keeper_, as it
is called, on the top of the magnet, and taking hold of the handle,
it will adhere sufficiently strongly to allow itself to be lifted
up--so wonderful is its power of attraction. If you take a needle, and
just draw one of its ends along one extremity of the magnet, and then
draw the other end along the other extremity, and then gently place
it on the surface of some water (the needle will generally float on
the surface, owing to the slight greasiness communicated to it by the
fingers), you will be able to get all the phenomena of attraction and
repulsion, by bringing another magnetised needle near to it.
[Illustration: Fig. 39.]
I want you now to observe, that although I have shewn you in these
magnets that this double power becomes evident principally at the
extremities, yet the _whole_ of the magnet is concerned in giving the
power. That will at first seem rather strange; and I must therefore
shew you an experiment to prove that this is not an accidental matter,
but that the whole of the mass is really concerned in this force,
just as in falling the whole of the mass is acted upon by the force
of gravitation. I have here (fig. 40) a steel bar, and I am going to
make it a magnet, by rubbing it on the large magnet (fig. 39). I have
now made the two ends magnetic in opposite ways. I do not at present
know one from the other, but we can soon find out. You see when I bring
it near our magnetic needle (fig. 38) one end repels and the other
attracts; and the middle will neither attract nor repel--it _cannot_,
because it is _half-way between the two ends_. But now, if I break
out that piece (_n s_), and then examine it--see how strongly one end
(_n_) pulls at this end (S, fig. 38), and how it repels the other end
(N). And so it can be shewn that every part of the magnet contains this
power of attraction and repulsion, but that the power is only rendered
evident at the end of the mass. You will understand all this in a
little while; but what you have now to consider is, that every part
of this steel is in itself a magnet. Here is a little fragment which
I have broken out of the very centre of the bar, and you will still
see that one end is attractive and the other is repulsive. Now, is not
this power a most wonderful thing? and very strange the means of taking
it from one substance and bringing it to other matters? I cannot make
a piece of iron or anything else heavier or lighter than it is. Its
cohesive power it must and does have; but, as you have seen by these
experiments, we can add or subtract this power of magnetism, and almost
do as we like with it.
[Illustration: Fig. 40.]
[Illustration: Fig. 41.]
And now we will return for a short time to the subject treated of
at the commencement of this lecture. You see here (fig. 41) a large
machine, arranged for the purpose of rubbing glass with silk, and for
obtaining the power called _electricity_; and the moment the handle of
the machine is turned, a certain amount of electricity is evolved, as
you will see by the rise of the little straw indicator (at A). Now, I
know from the appearance of repulsion of the pith ball at the end of
the straw, that electricity is present in those brass conductors (B B),
and I want you to see the manner in which that electricity can pass
away. [Touching the conductor (B) with his finger, the Lecturer drew
a spark from it, and the straw electrometer immediately fell.] There,
it has all gone; and that I have really taken it away, you shall see
by an experiment of this sort. If I hold this cylinder of brass by the
glass handle, and touch the conductor with it, I take away a little of
the electricity. You see the spark in which it passes, and observe that
the pith-ball indicator has fallen a little, which seems to imply that
so much electricity is lost; but it is not lost: it is here in this
brass; and I can take it away and carry it about, not because it has
any substance of its own, but by some strange property which we have
not before met with as belonging to any other force. Let us see whether
we have it here or not. [The Lecturer brought the charged cylinder
to a jet from which gas was issuing; the spark was seen to pass from
the cylinder to the jet, but the gas did not light.] Ah! the gas did
not light, but you saw the spark; there is, perhaps, some draught in
the room which blew the gas on one side, or else it would light. We
will try this experiment afterwards. You see from the spark that I can
transfer the power from the machine to this cylinder, and then carry it
away and give it to some other body. You know very well, as a matter of
experiment, that we can transfer the power of heat from one thing to
another; for if I put my hand near the fire it becomes hot. I can shew
you this by placing before us this ball, which has just been brought
red-hot from the fire. If I press this wire to it, some of the heat
will be transferred from the ball; and I have only now to touch this
piece of gun-cotton with the hot wire, and you see how I can transfer
the heat from the ball to the wire, and from the wire to the cotton.
So you see that some powers are transferable, and others are not.
Observe how long the heat stops in this ball. I might touch it with the
wire, or with my finger, and if I did so quickly, I should merely burn
the surface of the skin; whereas, if I touch that cylinder, however
rapidly, with my finger, the electricity is gone at once--dispersed on
the instant, in a manner wonderful to think of.
[Illustration: Fig. 42.]
I must now take up a little of your time in shewing you the manner
in which these powers are transferred from one thing to another;
for the manner in which _force_ may be conducted or transmitted is
extraordinary, and most essential for us to understand. Let us see in
what manner these powers travel from place to place. Both heat and
electricity can be conducted; and here is an arrangement I have made to
shew how the former can travel. It consists of a bar of copper (fig.
42); and if I take a spirit-lamp (this is one way of obtaining the
power of heat), and place it under that little chimney, the flame will
strike against the bar of copper and keep it hot. Now, you are aware
that power is being transferred from the flame of that lamp to the
copper, and you will see by-and-by that it is being conducted along
the copper from particle to particle; for, inasmuch as I have fastened
these wooden balls by a little wax at particular distances from the
point where the copper is first heated, first one ball will fall, and
then the more distant ones, as the heat travels along--and thus you
will learn that the heat travels gradually through the copper. You will
see that this is a very slow conduction of power, as compared with
electricity. If I take cylinders of wood and metal, joined together
at the ends, and wrap a piece of paper round, and then apply the heat
of this lamp to the place where the metal and wood join, you will see
how the heat will accumulate where the wood is, and burn the paper
with which I have covered it; but where the metal is beneath, the heat
is conducted away too fast for the paper to be burned. And so, if I
take a piece of wood and a piece of metal joined together, and put it
so that the flame should play equally both upon one and the other, we
shall soon find that the metal will become hot before the wood; for
if I put a piece of phosphorus on the wood, and another piece on the
copper, you will find that the phosphorus on the copper will take fire
before that on the wood is melted--and this shews you how badly the
wood conducts heat. But with regard to the travelling of electricity
from place to place, its rapidity is astonishing. I will, first of all,
take these pieces of glass and metal, and you will soon understand how
it is that the glass does not lose the power which it acquired when it
is rubbed by the silk. By one or two experiments I will shew you. If I
take this piece of brass and bring it near the machine, you see how
the electricity leaves the latter, and passes to the brass cylinder.
And, again, if I take a rod of metal and touch the machine with it, I
lower the indicator; but when I touch it with a rod of glass, no power
is drawn away,--shewing you that the electricity is conducted by the
glass and the metal in a manner entirely different: and to make you see
that more clearly, we will take one of our Leyden jars. Now, I must not
embarrass your minds with this subject too much; but if I take a piece
of metal, and bring it against the knob at the top and the metallic
coating at the bottom, you will see the electricity passing through the
air as a brilliant spark. It takes no sensible time to pass through
this; and if I were to take a long metallic wire, no matter what the
length--at least as far as we are concerned--and if I make one end of
it touch the outside, and the other touch the knob at the top, see how
the electricity passes!--it has flashed instantaneously through the
whole length of this wire. Is not this different from the transmission
of heat through this copper bar (fig. 42), which has taken a quarter
of an hour or more to reach the first ball?
[Illustration: Fig. 43.]
Here is another experiment, for the purpose of shewing the
conductibility of this power through some bodies, and not through
others. Why do I have this arrangement made of brass? [pointing to the
brass work of the electrical machine, fig. 41]. Because it conducts
electricity. And why do I have these columns made of glass? Because
they obstruct the passage of electricity. And why do I put that paper
tassel (fig. 43) at the top of the pole, upon a glass rod, and connect
it with this machine by means of a wire? You see at once that as
soon as the handle of the machine is turned, the electricity which
is evolved travels along this wire and up the wooden rod, and goes
to the tassel at the top, and you see the power of repulsion with
which it has endowed these strips of paper, each spreading outwards
to the ceiling and sides of the room. The outside of that wire is
covered with gutta-percha. It would not serve to keep the force from
you when touching it with your hands, because it would burst through;
but it answers our purpose for the present. And so you perceive how
easily I can manage to send this power of electricity from place to
place, by choosing the materials which can conduct the power. Suppose
I want to fire a portion of gunpowder, I can readily do it by this
transferable power of electricity. I will take a Leyden jar, or any
other arrangement which gives us this power, and arrange wires so
that they may carry the power to the place I wish; and then placing a
little gunpowder on the extremities of the wires, the moment I make the
connection by this discharging rod, I shall fire the gunpowder. [The
connection was made, and the gunpowder ignited.] And if I were to shew
you a stool like this, and were to explain to you its construction,
you could easily understand that we use glass legs, because these are
capable of preventing the electricity from going away to the earth. If,
therefore, I were to stand on this stool, and receive the electricity
through this conductor, I could give it to anything that I touched.
[The Lecturer stood upon the insulating stool, and placed himself in
connection with the conductor of the machine.] Now, I am electrified--I
can feel my hair rising up as the paper tassel did just now. Let us
see whether I can succeed in lighting gas by touching the jet with my
finger. [The Lecturer brought his finger near a jet from which gas was
issuing, when, after one or two attempts, the spark which came from his
finger to the jet set fire to the gas.] You now see how it is that
this power of electricity can be transferred from the matter in which
it is generated, and conducted along wires and other bodies, and thus
be made to serve new purposes utterly unattainable by the powers we
have spoken of on previous days; and you will not now be at a loss to
bring this power of electricity into comparison with those which we
have previously examined; and to-morrow we shall be able to go further
into the consideration of these transferable powers.