From the motion above a north magnet pole in the centre of one
of the circles should make the wire continually turn round.
Arranged a magnet needle in a glass tube with mercury about it,
and by a cork, water, &c., supported a connecting wire so that
the upper end should go into the silver cup and its mercury,
and the lower move in a channel of mercury round the pole of
the needle. The battery arranged with the wire as before. In
this way got the revolution of the wire round the pole of the
magnet. The direction was as follow, looking from above down:--
[Illustration: FIG. 2. (FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL SKETCH.)]
Very satisfactory, but make more sensible apparatus.
Tuesday, Sept. 4.
Apparatus for revolution of wire and magnet. A deep basin with
bit of wax at bottom and then filled with mercury. A magnet
stuck upright in wax so that pole just above the surface of
mercury. Then piece of wire floated by cork at lower end
dipping into merc^y and above into silver cup as before:--
[Illustration: FIG. 3. (FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL SKETCH.)]
The research on the electromagnetic rotations, which was published in
the _Quarterly Journal of Science_ for October, 1821 (and reprinted in
the second volume of the “Experimental Researches in Electricity”), was
the occasion of a very serious misunderstanding with Dr. Wollaston and
his friends, which at one time threatened to cause Faraday’s exclusion
from the Royal Society. Faraday’s prompt and frank action in appealing
to Dr. Wollaston saved him in a very unpleasant crisis; and the latter
came three or four times to the laboratory to witness the experiments.
On Christmas Day of the same year, Faraday succeeded in making a wire
through which an electric current is passing move under the influence
of the earth’s magnetism alone. His brother-in-law, George Barnard, who
was in the laboratory at the time, wrote:--“All at once he exclaimed,
‘Do you see, do you see, do you see, George?’ as the wire began to
revolve. One end I recollect was in the cup of quicksilver, the other
attached above to the centre. I shall never forget the enthusiasm
expressed in his face and the sparkling in his eyes!”
[Sidenote: SCENES IN THE LABORATORY.]
In 1822 little was added to Faraday’s scientific work. He had a
joint paper with Stodart on steel before the Royal Society, and
in the _Quarterly Journal_ two short chemical papers and four on
electromagnetical motions and magnetism. He had long kept a commonplace
book in which he entered notes and queries as well as extracts from
books and journals; but this year he began a fresh manuscript volume,
into which he transferred many of the queries and suggestions of
his own originating. This volume he called “Chemical Notes, Hints,
Suggestions, and Objects of Pursuit.” It contains many of the germs of
his own future discoveries, as the following examples show:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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