Rudimentary Electricity: Being a Concise Exposition of the General Principles of Electrical Science, and the Purposes to which it Has Been Applied

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John Weale, 1853 - Electricity - 195 pages
 

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Page 153 - ... in a fluid insulating dielectric, as air, is very evident. It is at the extremity of the point that the intensity necessary to charge the air is first acquired (1374); it is from thence that the charged particle recedes; and the mechanical force which it impresses on the air to form a current is in every way favoured by the shape and position of the rod, of which the point forms the termination. At the same time, the point, having become the origin of an active mechanical force, does, by the...
Page 41 - ... made to contain more electricity, but yet the compression will remain still the same. 200] To make what is here said more intelligible, let us suppose a long tube to be filled with air, and let part of this tube, and consequently the air within, be heated, the air will thereby expand, and consequently that part of the tube will contain less air than it did before, but yet the air in that part will be just as much compressed as in the rest of the tube. In like manner, if you suppose the electric...
Page 10 - The insulating and conducting power is, in fact, a difference of degree only: still, the extreme differences are so great, that if classed in relation to such differences, those at the extremes of the series admit of being considered the one as insulators, the other as conductors; whilst the intermediate tenns are made up of substances which may be considered as imperfect, taken as either.
Page 40 - There is a substance, which I call the electric fluid, the particles of which repel each other and attract the particles of all other matter with a force inversely as some less power of the distance than the cube : the particles of all other matter also, repel each other, and attract those of the electric fluid, with a force * [Petropoli, 1759.] varying according to the same power of the distances.
Page 186 - ... the terminating branches should be connected with a spring of water, a drain, or some other conducting channel. In a ship, each mast should have its own capacious conductor permanently fixed and connected, with bands of copper passing through the sides of the ship, under the deck-beams, and with large bolts leading through the keels and keelson, and including, by other connections, all the principal metallic masses employed in the construction of the hull. Under such a system, a discharge of...
Page 41 - DBF. 1. When the electric fluid within any body is more compressed than in its natural state, I call that body positively electrified : when it is less compressed, I call the body negatively electrified. It is plain from what has been here said that if any number of conducting bodies be joined by conductors, and one of the bodies be positively electrified, that all the others must be so too.
Page 135 - ... not sufficient to saturate the redundant matter in the trial plate, they would be undercharged. Having by these means found what size the trial plate must be made so that the redundant matter in it should be just sufficient to saturate the redundant fluid in B, I tried the body b in the same manner, and if I found that it required the trial plate to be of the same size in order that the redundant matter in it should be just sufficient to saturate the redundant fluid in b, I was well assured that...
Page 156 - ... by catching in a mirror, whilst revolving on a horizontal axis at the rate of 800 times in a second, three electrical sparks produced by the discharge of an electrical jar in an interrupted circuit, the interruptions being at each end and in the middle of the conducting wire. In this experiment the centre spark fell out of the line of the other sparks by half a degree of the circle...
Page 124 - ... within the surface of each opposed hemisphere in which we may conceive the whole force to be collected and to be the same as if derived from every point on the surface. The whole force will vary as the squares of the distances between these points inversely ; so that a unit of force at a unit of distance between the nearest points of the spheres being given, it is easy to assign or predict the force at any other distance at...

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