The effects of the current, such as electrolysis, and the transfer of electrification from one body to another, are all progressive actions which require time for their accomplishment, and are therefore of the nature of motions.
As to the velocity of the current, we have shewn that we know nothing about it, it may be the tenth of an inch in an hour, or a hundred thousand miles in a second[1]. So far are we from knowing its absolute value in any case, that we do not even know whether what we call the positive direction is the actual direction of the motion or the reverse.
But all that we assume here is that the electric current involves motion of some kind. That which is the cause of electric currents has been called Electromotive Force. This name has long been used with great advantage, and has never led to any inconsistency in the language of science. Electromotive force is always to be understood to act on electricity only, not on the bodies in which the electricity resides. It is never to be confounded with ordinary mechanical force, which acts on bodies only, not on the electricity in them. If we ever come to know the formal relation between electricity and ordinary matter, we shall probably also know the relation between electromotive force and ordinary force.
570.] When ordinary force acts on a body, and when the body yields to the force, the work done by the force is measured by the product of the force into the amount by which the body yields. Thus, in the case of water forced through a pipe, the work done at any section is measured by the fluid pressure at the section multiplied into the quantity of water which crosses the section.
In the same way the work done by an electromotive force is measured by the product of the electromotive force into the quantity of electricity which crosses a section of the conductor under the action of the electromotive force.
The work done by an electromotive force is of exactly the same kind as the work done by an ordinary force, and both are measured by the same standards or units.
Part of the work done by an electromotive force acting on a conducting circuit is spent in overcoming the resistance of the circuit, and this part of the work is thereby converted into heat. Another part of the work is spent in producing the electromagnetic phenomena observed by Ampere, in which conductors are made to move by electromagnetic forces. The rest of the work
- ↑ Exp. Res., 1648.
