tendency with which it can combine. It also explains why, in numerous cases, the atoms of the evolved substances are not retained by the terminals (an obvious difficulty in the way of all theories which suppose the terminals to attract the atoms): for the evolved substances are expelled from the liquid, not drawn out by an attraction.
Many of the perplexities which had harassed the older theories were at once removed when the phenomena were regarded from Faraday's point of view. Thus, mere mixtures (as opposed to chemical compounds) are not separated into their constituents by the electric current; although there would seem to be no reason why the Grothuss-Davy polar attraction should not operate as well on elements contained in mixtures as on elements contained in compounds.
In the latter part of the same year (1833) Faraday took up the subject again.[1] It was at this time that he introduced the terms which have ever since been generally used to describe the phenomena of electro-chemical decomposition. To the terminals by which the electric current passes into or out of the decomposing body he gave the name electrodes. The electrode of high potential, at which oxygen, chlorine, acids, &c., are evolved, he called the anode, and the electrode of low potential, at which metals, alkalis, and bases are evolved, the cathode. Those bodies which are decomposed directly by the current he named electrolytes; the parts into which they are decomposed, ions; the acid ions, which travel to the anode, he named anions; and the metallic ions, which pass to the cathode, cations,
Faraday now proceeded to test the truth of a supposition which he had published rather more than a year previously,[2] and which indeed had apparently been suspected by Gay-Lussac and Thénard[3] so early as 1811; namely, that the rate at which an electrolyte is decomposed depends solely on the intensity of the electric current passing through it, and not at all on the size of the electrodes or the strength of the solution. Having
