| RefNo | AP/21/9 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Unpublished paper, 'Experimental researches on the conducting power of wires for electricity and on the heat developed in metallic and liquid conductors' by William Ritchie |
| Date | [May 1837] |
| Description | Ritchie finds that with feeble magnetic needles, the deflecting forces are not proportional to the force of the current, but approach nearer and nearer to that proportion by increasing the magnetic power of the needles; a result which the author thinks is strictly deducible from the universal law of nature, that the attraction mutually exerted by two bodies is measured by the sum of their masses. Ritchie shows that the formula of Ohm, expressive of the conducting powers of wires, and of the resistances which they offer to currents of voltaic electricity, is an approximation to the truth only in the case of feeble currents, and that with the same metal, the conducting powers are not as the lengths of the wires.
Subject: Physics / Electricity / Magnetism
Received 10 May 1837. Read 15 June 1837.
Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 3 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'Experiment researches on the conducting powers of wires for electricity; on the heat developed in metallic and liquid conductors'. |
| Extent | 37p |
| Format | Manuscript |
| PhysicalDescription | Ink on paper |
| Digital images | View item on Science in the Making |
| AccessStatus | Open |
| RelatedMaterial | DOI: 10.1098/rspl.1815.0349 |
| DOI: 10.1098/rspl.1830.0296 |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA5611 | Ritchie; William (c 1790 - 1837) | c 1790 - 1837 |