Abstract
MATTER being fundamentally electrical in nature, it is impossible to have two materials of different chemical composition which are not also different in electrical constitution. When different materials come in contact in such a way that electrical forces can produce observable effects, such effects are invariably present. They may arise through the materials being conductors, so that electric current may flow across the boundary, or through the boundary being deformable, so that electrokinetic effects, in the widest sense, may arise. Dr. Butler has neither written a long treatise on the whole vast subject, nor a brief general introduction to it, nor again has he chosen but one particular aspect. The selection of subjects has been made, as he explains in his preface, by avoiding those which he feels to have been adequately treated in other works, and by concentrating chiefly on those in which he has become, through his own researches, most interested. To the general reader, the book will therefore appear to lack balance though not interest. To a student interested in some particular point, it may prove to be informative, stimulating or wholly silent. The reviewer feels, therefore, that his chief task should be to summarize the subjects dealt with.
Electrocapillarity
The Chemistry and Physics of Electrodes and other Charged Surfaces. By Dr. J. A. V. Butler. Pp. x + 208. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1940). 12s. 6d. net.
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HARTLEY, G. Electrocapillarity. Nature 146, 536 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146536a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146536a0