Unpublished letter, 'On the reabsorption of the mixed gases in a voltameter' from M H [Moritz Hermann] Jacobi to Michael Faraday

Description

Jacobi reports that if the mixed gases developed from the decomposition of water by a voltaic current are allowed to remain in the voltameter in which they were collected, in contact with the fluid which produced them, they by degrees diminish in volume, and ultimately disappear by being absorbed by the fluid. He has not yet fully determined the precise conditions on which this phenomenon depends, but suggest that it is owing to a portion of the mixed gases, diffused throughout the whole liquid, coming into contact with the platinum plates, and being recombined on the surface of those plates; and this process being renewed with every fresh portion of the gases which takes the place of the former, the whole of the gases are thus reconverted into water.

Subject: Physics / Chemistry

Received 2 February 1847. Communicated by Faraday.

Written by Jacobi in St Petersburg [Russia]. Dated '7/19th Jan. 1847' to account for both the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 5 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'On the reabsorption of the mixed gases in a voltameter. By Professor M. H. Jacobi, in a letter to Michael Faraday, Esq., F. R. S. Communicated by Dr. Faraday'.

Reference number

AP/29/9

Earliest possible date

19 January 1847

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

4 pages

Format

Manuscript