Professor Faraday has shown that the Electricity which decomposes,
and that which is evolved in the decomposition of, a certain quantity
of matter, are alike. What an enormous quantity of electricity,
therefore, is required for the decomposition of a single grain of
water! It must be in quantity sufficient to sustain a platinum wire
1/104th of an inch in thickness red-hot in contact with the air
for three minutes and three-quarters. It would appear that 800,000
charges of a Leyden battery, charged by thirty turns of a very large
and powerful plate-machine in full action, are necessary to supply
electricity sufficient to decompose a single grain of water, or to
equal the quantity of electricity which is naturally associated with
the elements of that grain of water, endowing them with their mutual
chemical affinity. Now the above quantity of electricity, if passed at
once through the head of a rat or a cat, would kill it as by a flash of
lightning. The quantity is, indeed, equal to that which is developed
from a charged thunder-cloud.