Electrolysis, Laws of

The following are the principal laws, originally discovered by Faraday, and sometimes called Faraday's Laws of Electrolysis: 1. Electrolysis cannot take place unle the electrolyte is a conductor. Conductor here means an electrolytic conductor, one that conducts by its own molecules traveling, and being decomposed. (See Grothü ' Hypothesis.) II. The energy of the electrolytic action of the current is the same wherever exercised in different parts of the circuit. III. The same quantity of electricity--that is the same current for the same period----- decomposes chemically equivalent quantities of the bodies it decomposes, or the weights of elements separated in electrolytes by the same quantity of electricity (in coulombs or some equivalent unit) are to each other as their chemical equivalent. IV. The quantity of a body decomposed in a given time is proportional to the strength of the current. To these may be added the following: V. A definite and fixed electro-motive force is required for the decomposition of each compound, greater for some and le for others. Without sufficient electro-motive force expended on the molecule no decomposition will take place. (See Current, Convective.)