[Footnote 18: Dissociation must be distinguished from decomposition,
which is what occurs when the whole of a particle (compound, molecule,
atom, etc.) breaks up into its component parts. In dissociation the
breaking up is only partial, and the resultant consists of a mixture
of decomposed and undecomposed parts. See Ganot's Physics, 17th
English edition, Sec. 395, for examples.--ED.]
The comparison of the two cases leads to the employment of a new image
for representing the phenomenon which has been produced throughout the
saline solution. We have introduced a single molecule of salt, and
everything occurs as if there were 1.75 molecules. May it not really
be said that the number is 1.75, because the sea-salt is partly
dissociated, and a molecule has become transformed into 0.75 molecule
of sodium, 0.75 of chlorium, and 0.25 of salt?
This is a way of speaking which seems, at first sight, strangely
contradicted by experiment. Professor Van t' Hoff, like other
chemists, would certainly have rejected--in fact, he did so at first--
such a conception, if, about the same time, an illustrious Swedish
scholar, M.
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