Faraday as a Discoverer, John Tyndall [children's books read aloud .txt] 📗

once its maximum. This he showed to be due to the time required by the iron of the electro-magnet to assume its full magnetic power, which time vanishes when a current, without iron, is employed. ‘In this experiment,’ he says, ‘we may, I think, justly say that a ray of light is electrified, and the electric forces illuminated.’ In the helix, as with the magnets, he submitted air to magnetic influence ‘carefully and anxiously,’ but could not discover any trace of action on the polarized ray.

 

Many substances possess the power of turning the plane of polarization without the intervention of magnetism. Oil of turpentine and quartz are examples; but Faraday showed that, while in one direction, that is, across the lines of magnetic force, his rotation is zero, augmenting gradually from this until it attains its maximum, when the direction of the ray is parallel to the lines of force; in the oil of turpentine the rotation is independent of the direction of the ray. But he showed that a still more profound distinction exists between the magnetic rotation and the natural one. I will try to explain how. Suppose a tube with glass ends containing oil of turpentine to be placed north and south. Fixing the eye at the south end of the tube, let a polarized beam be sent through it from the north. To the observer in this position the rotation of the plane of polarization, by the turpentine, is right-handed. Let the eye be placed at the north end of the tube, and a beam be sent through it from the south; the rotation is still right-handed.

Not so, however, when a bar of heavy glass is subjected to the action of an electric current. In this case if, in the first position of the eye, the rotation be right-handed, in the second position it is left-handed. These considerations make it manifest that if a polarized beam, after having passed through the oil of turpentine in its natural state, could by any means be reflected back through the liquid, the rotation impressed upon the direct beam would be exactly neutralized by that impressed upon the reflected one. Not so with the induced magnetic effect. Here it is manifest that the rotation would be doubled by the act of reflection.

Hence Faraday concludes that the particles of the oil of turpentine which rotate by virtue of their natural force, and those which rotate in virtue of the induced force, cannot be in the same condition. The same remark applies to all bodies which possess a natural power of rotating the plane of polarization.

 

And then he proceeded with exquisite skill and insight to take advantage of this conclusion. He silvered the ends of his piece of heavy glass, leaving, however, a narrow portion parallel to two edges diagonally opposed to each other unsilvered. He then sent his beam through this uncovered portion, and by suitably inclining his glass caused the beam within it to reach his eye first direct, and then after two, four, and six reflections. These corresponded to the passage of the ray once, three times, five times, and seven times through the glass. He thus established with numerical accuracy the exact proportionality of the rotation to the distance traversed by the polarized beam. Thus in one series of experiments where the rotation required by the direct beam was 12degrees, that acquired by three passages through the glass was 36degrees, while that acquired by five passages was 60degrees. But even when this method of magnifying was applied, he failed with various solid substances to obtain any effect; and in the case of air, though he employed to the utmost the power which these repeated reflections placed in his hands, he failed to produce the slightest sensible rotation.

 

These failures of Faraday to obtain the effect with gases seem to indicate the true seat of the phenomenon. The luminiferous ether surrounds and is influenced by the ultimate particles of matter.

The symmetry of the one involves that of the other. Thus, if the molecules of a crystal be perfectly symmetrical round any line through the crystal, we may safely conclude that a ray will pass along this line as through ordinary glass. It will not be doubly refracted. From the symmetry of the liquid figures, known to be produced in the planes of freezing, when radiant heat is sent through ice, we may safely infer symmetry of aggregation, and hence conclude that the line perpendicular to the planes of freezing is a line of no double refraction; that it is, in fact, the optic axis of the crystal. The same remark applies to the line joining the opposite blunt angles of a crystal of Iceland spar. The arrangement of the molecules round this line being symmetrical, the condition of the ether depending upon these molecules shares their symmetry; and there is, therefore, no reason why the wavelength should alter with the alteration of the azimuth round this line. Annealed glass has its molecules symmetrically arranged round every line that can be drawn through it; hence it is not doubly refractive. But let the substance be either squeezed or strained in one direction, the molecular symmetry, and with it the symmetry of the ether, is immediately destroyed and the glass becomes doubly refractive.

Unequal heating produces the same effect. Thus mechanical strains reveal themselves by optical effects; and there is little doubt that in Faraday’s experiment it is the magnetic strain that produces the rotation of the plane of polarization.[2]

 

Footnotes to Chapter 10

 

[1] ‘By a diamagnetic,’ says Faraday, ‘I mean a body through which lines of magnetic force are passing, and which does not by their action assume the usual magnetic state of iron or loadstone.’

Faraday subsequently used this term in a different sense from that here given, as will immediately appear.

 

[2] The power of double refraction conferred on the centre of a glass rod, when it is caused to sound the fundamental note due to its longitudinal vibration, and the absence of the same power in the case of vibrating air (enclosed in a glass organ-pipe), seems to be analogous to the presence and absence of Faraday’s effect in the same two substances.

 

Faraday never, to my knowledge, attempted to give, even in conversation, a picture of the molecular condition of his heavy glass when subjected to magnetic influence. In a mathematical investigation of the subject, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society for 1856, Sir William Thomson arrives at the conclusion that the ‘diamagnetic’ is in a state of molecular rotation.

 

Chapter 11.

 

Discovery of diamagnetism—researches on magne-crystallic action.

 

Faraday’s next great step in discovery was announced in a memoir on the ‘Magnetic Condition of all matter,’ communicated to the Royal Society on December 18, 1845. One great source of his success was the employment of extraordinary power. As already stated, he never accepted a negative answer to an experiment until he had brought to bear upon it all the force at his command. He had over and over again tried steel magnets and ordinary electro-magnets on various substances, but without detecting anything different from the ordinary attraction exhibited by a few of them. Stronger coercion, however, developed a new action. Before the pole of an electro-magnet, he suspended a fragment of his famous heavy glass; and observed that when the magnet was powerfully excited the glass fairly retreated from the pole. It was a clear case of magnetic repulsion. He then suspended a bar of the glass between two poles; the bar retreated when the poles were excited, and set its length equatorially or at right angles to the line joining them. When an ordinary magnetic body was similarly suspended, it always set axially, that is, from pole to pole.

 

Faraday called those bodies which were repelled by the poles of a magnet, diamagnetic bodies; using this term in a sense different from that in which he employed it in his memoir on the magnetization of light. The term magnetic he reserved for bodies which exhibited the ordinary attraction. He afterwards employed the term magnetic to cover the whole phenomena of attraction and repulsion, and used the word paramagnetic to designate such magnetic action as is exhibited by iron.

 

Isolated observations by Brugmanns, Becquerel, Le Baillif, Saigy, and Seebeck had indicated the existence of a repulsive force exercised by the magnet on two or three substances; but these observations, which were unknown to Faraday, had been permitted to remain without extension or examination. Having laid hold of the fact of repulsion, Faraday immediately expanded and multiplied it.

He subjected bodies of the most varied qualities to the action of his magnet:—mineral salts, acids, alkalis, ethers, alcohols, aqueous solutions, glass, phosphorus, resins, oils, essences, vegetable and animal tissues, and found them all amenable to magnetic influence. No known solid or liquid proved insensible to the magnetic power when developed in sufficient strength. All the tissues of the human body, the blood—though it contains iron—

included, were proved to be diamagnetic. So that if you could suspend a man between the poles of a magnet, his extremities would retreat from the poles until his length became equatorial.

 

Soon after he had commenced his researches on diamagnetism, Faraday noticed a remarkable phenomenon which first crossed my own path in the following way: In the year 1849, while working in the cabinet of my friend, Professor Knoblauch, of Marburg, I suspended a small copper coin between the poles of an electro-magnet. On exciting the magnet, the coin moved towards the poles and then suddenly stopped, as if it had struck against a cushion. On breaking the circuit, the coin was repelled, the revulsion being so violent as to cause it to spin several times round its axis of suspension. A Silber-groschen similarly suspended exhibited the same deportment. For a moment I thought this a new discovery; but on looking over the literature of the subject, it appeared that Faraday had observed, multiplied, and explained the same effect during his researches on diamagnetism.

His explanation was based upon his own great discovery of magneto-electric currents. The effect is a most singular one.

A weight of several pounds of copper may be set spinning between the electro-magnetic poles; the excitement of the magnet instantly stops the rotation. Though nothing is apparent to the eye, the copper, if moved in the excited magnetic field, appears to move through a viscous fluid; while, when a flat piece of the metal is caused to pass to and fro like a saw between the poles, the sawing of the magnetic field resembles the cutting through of cheese or butter.[1]

This virtual friction of the magnetic field is so strong, that copper, by its rapid rotation between the poles, might probably be fused.

We may easily dismiss this experiment by saying that the heat is due to the electric currents excited in the copper. But so long as we are unable to reply to the question, ‘What is an electric current?’

the explanation is only provisional. For my own part, I look with profound interest and hope on the strange action here referred to.

 

Faraday’s thoughts ran intuitively into experimental combinations, so that subjects whose capacity for experimental treatment would, to ordinary minds, seem to be exhausted in a moment, were shown by him to be all but inexhaustible. He has now an object in view, the first step towards which is the proof that the principle of Archimedes is true of magnetism. He forms magnetic solutions of various degrees of strength, places them between the poles of his magnet, and suspends in the solutions various magnetic bodies.

He proves that when the solution is stronger than the body plunged in it, the body, though magnetic, is repelled; and when an elongated piece of it is surrounded by the solution, it sets, like a diamagnetic