Residence | York | Jan. 7.
Dear Faraday
I cannot refrain from sending you my congratulations at this commencement of a new year on the great discovery you have made in placing so universal & important an element as oxygen side by side with iron in the “Paramagnetics”.
May I enquire whether you obtain a neutral point at which there is neither Dia- nor Para-magnetism by mixing oxygen & nitrogen in a certain proportion, & whereabouts that proportion is? also whether any of the chemical compounds of these gases exhibit such neutrality, or whether the most oxygenous are themselves in any degree para magnetic at common temperatures? I am curious also to know whether Chlorine Bromine or Iodine, have, or approach to, this property and whether their admixtures or combinations with oxygen counteract its paramagnetism in the same degree with other substances? I would not ask these questions if I supposed it would give you any trouble to answer: but they are points which I dare say you have ascertained.
Believe me | Yours sincerely | Wm. Vernon Harcourt
FARADAY, Michael (1851c): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Twenty-fifth Series. On the magnetic and diamagnetic condition of bodies”, Phil. Trans., 141: 7-28.
Please cite as “Faraday2368,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2368