WHAT IS ELECTRICITY?

Shannon News, 22 July 1924, Page 3

WHAT IS ELECTRICITY?

(To the Editor). Sir,—-Faraday, on being asked this question, said: “I have been years studying it and I-do not know.” Turner, the great landscape painter, and Buskin were talking on painting. rUskin, in his eloquent style, spoke for some time, then “What have you to say, Mr Turner?” Turner replied: “Yes, painting is a ruin thing.”. The tone poet could do; the prose poet could explain. Electricity is a rum thing. 1 met -in Napier, Sir Ernest Biutherfurd’s people, plain Scotch. I. received a pamphlet from them shOAving his work of an experimental kind. He wa® trying to find suitable avoocLs or barks to make carbon points from. This week’s cable states that besides his knighthood he has a further honor conferred. He is of New Zealand, studied at Christchurch College and hardly a soul knOAA r s anything of him. Lately a death-dealing ray was supposed .to have been discovered. I doubt it. l-ytton in his “Coming Race.” foretells something of the kind. Also in “A Strange Story” he gives a man a. machine or rod which ha could use to kill. These are creations of the imagination. The following are not:— Measures of Electricity.—The Board of Trade unit is a quantity of electricity sufficient to sustain a 16-candle power light for 13 hours. Electrical measurements are expressed an terms •of the centimetre, the gramme and the second (C. G. Sunit) as foUoAvs: The Ohm, unit of resistance: the ampere, unit of current, the volt unit of elec-tro-motive force, and the watt, unit of power. The Ohm is the electrical resistance of a column of mercury 106 centimetres long and of one square millimetre section. The ampere .is that current of electricity that decomposes .00009324 gramme *of water per second. The volt.—One volt equals one .ampere .of current passing through a substance having one ohm of resistance. The Watt is the power of one ampere of current passing through resistance of one ohm. The joule is the work done by one watt of electrical power in one second.

Now, of,- course, you understand. The names are those of scientists who found out these units of power and resistance. Ohm (German, Volta (French), the voltaic pile), Watt I do not know, also. Joule, Ampere (French). Poor old Faraday, the father of electricity, and the writer of “The Chemistry of a candle,” is not there. Zuchner. a scientist, said that 'God Avas “motive force intelligent.” We Avill leave it at that.— Yours, etc.. D. M. O’CONNOR, Grey Street, Shannon. .