Note on electric discharge phenomena in rotating silica bulbs
| Autor: | Robert John Strutt |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 1913 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character. 89:340-344 |
| ISSN: | 2053-9150 0950-1207 |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rspa.1913.0088 |
| Popis: | The late Rev. F. J. Jervis Smith described some curious experiments on this subject before the Royal Society, without, however, offering any interpretation of his results. I have recently repeated most of his experiments, and have made others which have thrown light on the matter. As the result, it does not seem that anything fundamentally new as to the mechanism of discharge is to be learnt from this line of research. Still, the work is worthy of brief record, if only to save others the trouble of traversing the same ground. Jervis Smith’s fundamental experiment is as follows: The exhausted bulb is placed near a body charged to 1,000 volts or more. When the bulb is rotated, a luminous glow is maintained within it. It is not difficult to foresee this result. The rarefied gas may be regarded as a conductor. Suppose the body negatively electrified. Then, since the potential on the inside of the bulb is lower near the outside electrified body than elsewhere, positive electricity will flow to this neighbourhood and negative electricity to other parts of the bulb, until the electric field inside the bulb is nearly neutralised. When the bulb is rotated, these induced charges will be carried round with it, and will have to flow through the gas to recover their equilibrium position. In doing this they set up the ordinary luminosity of discharge. To predict the precise direction of the stream lines would be very difficult, and it does not appear that much would be gained by success. As regards the detailed effects of magnetic fields in various directions in deflecting the luminosity the same may be said. I find that, just as in ordinary discharge tubes, the luminosity at low vacua is mainly that characterising the residual gas, while at high vacua the fluorescence of the silica under cathode rays predominates. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|