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Leakage from Electrified Metal Plates and Points placed above and below Uninsulated Flames
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2014
Extract
§ 1. In § 10 of our paper “On Electrical Properties of Fumes proceeding from Flames and Burning Charcoal,” communicated to this Society on 5th April, results of observations on the leakage between two parallel metal plates with an initial difference of electric potential of 6·2 volts between them, when the fumes from flames and burnings were allowed to pass between them and round them, were given. The first part (§§ 1–4) of the present short paper gives results of observations on the leakage between two copper plates 1 centimetre apart, when one of them is kept at a constant high positive or negative potential; and the other, after being metallically connected with the electrometer-sheath, is disconnected, and left to receive electricity through fumes between the two.
The method of observation (see fig. 1) was as follows:—Two copper plates were fixed in a block of paraffin at the top of a round tinned iron funnel 96 centimetres long and 15·6 centimetres internal diameter. A spirit-lamp or a Bunsen burner, the only two flames used in these experiments, was placed at the bottom of the funnel, 86 centimetres below the two copper plates. One terminal of a voltaic battery was connected to one plate, B, and the other terminal was connected to the sheath of a Kelvin quadrant electrometer. The other copper plate was connected to one of the pair of quadrants of the electrometer in such a way that by pulling a silk cord with a hinged platinum wire at its end, this copper plate and this pair of quadrants could be insulated from the sheath of the electrometer and the rest of the apparatus.
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- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1899
References
page 42 note * We have recently (June 1897) found the following statement, in Worthington's communication to the British Association (1889, Report, pp. 225, 227) “on the Discharge of Electrification by Flames”:—“The observation seems to have been made by Priestley, that the discharge takes place with apparently equal rapidity, if the rod be held at the side of, or even below, the flame at the distance of, say, five centimetres.” The four words which we have italicised are not verified with the forms and arrangements which we have used, as we find enormously greater leakage five centimetres above a flame than five centimetres below it; but it is very interesting to learn that Priestley had found any leakage at all through air five centimetres below a flame.
page 43 note * We sometimes found the multicellular electrometer to insulate so well that in five minutes there was no readable leakage from 240 volts.