Harper's Electricity Book for BoysAdams, Joseph H. (Joseph Henry)
Science
Harper's Electricity Book for Boys
Adams, Joseph H. (Joseph Henry)
Electricity -- Juvenile literature
In Fig. 9 a complete outfit is shown for any plating process, the
difference being only in the solution and anodes. For silver-plating a
silver solution and silver anodes are required, while for gold the gold
solution and gold anodes will be necessary. In this illustration, A
represents the tank, B the battery, C C the anodes, D D D the kathodes,
or articles to be plated, E the positive rod, F the negative, and G, H
the leading-in and leading-out wires.
There is often a doubt in a boy’s mind as to how the battery is to be
connected up to the bath and the articles suspended in it. But there
will be no difficulty about it once that the principle of the process is
thoroughly understood.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
It is well to remember that the electro-plating bath is just the reverse
of a battery in its action. The process carried on in a battery is the
generation of electricity by the action of the acid on the positive
metal, accompanied by the formation of a salt on one of the elements;
while in the plating-bath the current from an external source (the
battery or dynamo) breaks up the salts in solution and deposits the
metal on one of the elements (the kathode).
The remaining element in the solution attacks the salts, in chemical
lumps or granular form, and dissolves them to take the place of the
exhausted salts; or it attacks the metal anode from which these salts
were originally made, and eats off the portion necessary to replace the
loss caused by the action of the current in depositing the fruits of
this robbery in metallic form upon the article to be plated (the
kathode). There should be no confusion in the matter of properly
connecting the poles if one remembers that the current is flowing
through the battery as well as through the wires and the solution in the
tank.
Get clearly in your mind that the current originates in the battery of
zinc and carbon or zinc and copper. The zinc is electro-positive to
carbon or copper, and at a higher electric level the current flows from
the zinc plate inside the cell to the carbon or copper; therefore, the
zinc is the positive pole. Now the current, having flowed through the
battery from zinc to carbon, or the negative plate, is bound to flow out
of the battery from the carbon through the apparatus and back again to
the zinc in the battery. Therefore, the wire (G) attached to the carbon
of the battery leads a positive or + current, although the carbon is
negative; in the battery, and the wire (H) leading out is negative, or
-, although it returns the current to the positive pole of the battery.
This is the simple explanation of the circulation of current; but to cut
it down still more, always remember to attach the wire from the anode
rod to the carbon, or copper, of the battery, and the kathode rod to the
zinc of the battery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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