Page:Aether and Matter, 1900.djvu/30
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an aether essential to his views: compelled by absence of explanation of shadows to introduce the extraneous aid of luminiferous corpuscles: would welcome any constitutive aether that would not disturb the motions of the planets: atoms necessary to physics. Young's plea that the electric aether may also be the medium of optical propagation. Davy's view that electric attraction is of the essence of the atom, and is the cause of chemical affinity. Gauss on the necessity of a medium for the transmission of electric force between atoms. Kelvin's view that atoms are structures. Graham's view that an atom is a vortex in the aether. Fresnel's views on the optical influence of motion of material bodies.: the Earth's motion does not disturb the aether: his law of optical convection deduced from his hypothesis that the aether is denser in material media: consequence that ordinary optical phenomena are uninfluenced by the Earth's motion. | |
| Appendix E On kinematic and mechanical modes of representation of the activity of the Aether | 323 |
| Mechanical models and illustrations. Rotational elasticity: Kelvin's gyrostatic illustration, its limitations. Model of an electron in a rotational aether: its creation by a supernatural process: analogous constructions in elastic matter. Mechanical analysis of attractions between electrons; involves dissection of the aether by strain-tubes connecting complementary electrons: illustration from the generalized form of Stokes' analytical theorem. The ultimate foundation in physical theory is the Action principle. The electron effectively a point-charge: the details of its structure unknown. All physical representations are at bottom comparative or illustrative: the scheme of a rotational aether merely consolidates the various hypotheses into a single one. Static attraction transmitted, not propagated. A constitutive aether contrasted with an accidental one.
The electron theory essential to the formulation of ordinary electrodynamics as well as for radiation. Neumaun-Helmholtz electrodynamic potential theory invalid; experimental tests by FitzGerald and Lodge. The expression for the electrokinetic potential of two electrons compared with Weber's formula: they lead to the same results in the electrodynamics of ordinary currents. | |
| Appendix F Magnetic influences on radiation as a CLUE TO MOLECULAR CONSTITUTION | 341 |
| The Zeeman effect: determined for a molecule in which the mobile electrons are all negative: same results apply when there are mobile positive ions relatively very massive. Nature of magnetic polarization of a molecule, it does not involve orientation: the exceptional phenomena of the magnetic metals arise from cohesive aggregation of molecules. The polarizations of the Zeeman lines indicate the characters of the |