On the magnetic characters and relations of oxygen and nitrogen / Professor Faraday.

  • Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the magnetic characters and relations of oxygen and nitrogen / Professor Faraday. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [for the use of members.] Bopai 3ln0ttruttou of d^reat Britain* 1851. WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, January 24. Sir R. I. Murchison, Vice-President, in the Chair. Professor Faraday On the Magnetic Characters and Relations of Oxygen and Nitrogen. In a Friday Evening discourse on the diamagnetic condition of flame and gases, delivered on the 14th April, 1848, Mr. Faraday called attention to the singular condition of oxygen gas in its rela- tion to the magnet. It was then demonstrated that this gas was magnetic by its carrying a cloud of muriate of ammonia (itself dia- magnetic) to the poles of the magnet, around which it seemed to gyrate in vortices. A more elaborate paper on the same subject had previously appeared in the Phil. Mag. for December, 1847. Last year M. Becquerel, not aware of these researches, had redis- covered the high magnetic character of oxygen, made some indepen- dent investigations, and derived numerical results from them. These inquiries Mr. Faraday does not consider to interfere with, but strongly to confirm his own. Oxygen is one of the most remarkable of known bodies : it forms one half of the aggregate of all matter. Important as are its mag- netic properties, it seems incapable of receiving permanent magnetism like steel or the natural loadstone. — By a series of elementary experiments the audience were led to discriminate between these bodies, and soft iron, nickel, cobalt; which unless while under an extraneous magnetic influence, have no attractive force. Oxygen being of the latter class, it is not certain that, even while it possesses an attractive power, it is in the exact condition of the permanently magnetical body from which it derives it. g Were oxygen highly magnetic in the same extent as iron is, the immense quantity of magnetic power which would in that case be constantly undergoing variation by combustion, respiration, &c., would cause the most serious disturbances in nature. It is necessary to the conservation of the present state of things that the magnetic power in a given bulk of oxygen should be comparatively small. The audience were therefore told to expect no great demonstration of magnetism; but the extent to which that power does exist in oxygen and air, was proved by the following experiments : —