whether the differences which appear to exist are real and are caused by the difference in the molecules which adhere to them, or are due to the electrified centres which serve as the nuclei for them.
(44) Mobility and Recombination. It is equally important to be able, by measurement of mobility, to follow the modification which a change of temperature produces in the size of the agglomeration and to connect the ions observed at ordinary temperatures with the incomparably more mobile ions which we observe in flames, and which appear to be made up of single electrical centres, cathode corpuscles and perhaps α particles.
The rate of recombination of ions is as yet not well known in respect to the variations with pressure and temperature, although it certainly plays an essential part in the phenomena of disruptive discharge through gases at low pressures; it would be desirable if this point were better fixed.
(45) Ionization by Impact. Every actual theory of the disruptive discharge rests on the conception that the impact of an electrified particle in sufficiently rapid motion against a molecule can cause corpuscular dissociation.
This idea was a natural consequence of the known fact that cathode and Becquerel rays, made up of similar particles, make a gas through which they pass a conductor. If the corpuscular dissociation produces in the gas, separated from the molecule, a cathode corpuscle and a positive residue, these fragments can, if a sufficiently intense electric field exists in the gas, acquire a velocity great enough to act as β or α rays and cause from point to point a rapid increase in conductivity.
Townsend has shown how this consequence is capable of exact experimental verification, and he has found that between certain limits of velocity, each impact between the cathode corpuscle and a molecule results in a corpuscular dissociation of the same kind. The velocity acquired ought not, however, to exceed a certain limit beyond which the negative corpuscle or β particle passes through the atomic edifice without producing a sensible disturbance in it.
In order that a disruptive discharge may exist without an external cause to maintain the production of the first electrified centres, it is necessary that the positive centres should be able, like the negative, although with more difficulty, to produce corpuscular dissociation at the moment of their impact with the molecules, as this latter causes the conductivity produced in gases by the α rays.
Townsend has been able, in support of this hypothesis, to determine the exact moment when the disruptive phenomenon is produced, and to analyze the mechanism of it.
In addition to this fundamental conception of ionization by impact, the theory of the disruptive discharge has yet much progress to make.
