Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son — Background and Themes

That was before storage batteries became as widely used as they are to-day when everybody has one in the starting system of his automobile. That was also before the day of the small dry battery such as we use in pocket flash lights. The batteries which we made were like those which they used on telegraph systems, and were sometimes called "gravity" batteries. Of course, we tried several kinds and I believe I got quite a little acid around the house at one time or another. I'll tell you about only one kind but I shall use the words "electron," "proton," "nucleus," "atom," and "molecule," about some of which nothing was known when I was a boy.

We used a straight-sided glass jar which would hold about a gallon. On the bottom we set a star shaped arrangement made of sheets of copper with a long wire soldered to it so as to reach up out of the jar. Then we poured in a solution of copper sulphate until the jar was about half full. This solution was made by dissolving in water crystals of "blue vitriol" which we bought at the drug store.

Blue vitriol, or copper sulphate as the chemists would call it, is a substance which forms glassy blue crystals. Its molecules are formed of copper atoms, sulphur atoms, and oxygen atoms. In each molecule of it there is one atom of copper, one of sulphur and four of oxygen.

When it dissolves in water the molecules of the blue vitriol go wandering out into the spaces between the water molecules. But that isn't all that happens or the most important thing for one who is interested in making a battery.

Each molecule is formed by six atoms, that is by six little groups of electrons playing about six little nuclei. About each nucleus there is going on a game but some of the electrons are playing in the game about their own nucleus and at the same time taking some part in the game which is going on around one of the other nuclei. That's why the groups or atoms stay together as a molecule. When the molecules wander out into the spaces between the water molecules something happens to this complicated game.

It will be easiest to see what sort of thing happens if we talk about a molecule of ordinary table salt, for that has only two atoms in it. One atom is sodium and one is chlorine. The sodium molecule has eleven electrons playing around its nucleus. Fairly close to the nucleus there are two electrons. Then farther away there are eight more and these are having a perfect game. Then still farther away from the nucleus there is a single lonely electron.

The atom of chlorine has seventeen electrons which play about its nucleus. Close to the nucleus there are two. A little farther away there are eight just as there are in the sodium atom. Then still farther away there are seven.

I am going to draw a picture (Fig. 1) to show what I mean, but you must remember that these electrons are not all in the same plane as if they lay on a sheet of paper, but are scattered all around just as they would be if they were specks on a ball.

You see that the sodium atom has one lonely electron which hasn't any play fellows and that the chlorine atom has seven in its outside circle. It appears that eight would make a much better game. Suppose that extra electron in the sodium atom goes over and plays with those in the chlorine atom so as to make eight in the outside group as I have shown Fig. 2. That will be all right as long as it doesn't get out of sight of its own nucleus because you remember that the sodium nucleus is responsible for eleven electrons. The lonely electron of the sodium atom needn't be lonely any more if it can persuade its nucleus to stay so close to the chlorine atom that it can play in the outer circle of the chlorine atom.

The outer circle of the chlorine atom will then have a better game, for it will have just the eight that makes a perfect game. This can happen if the chlorine atom will stay close enough to the sodium atom so that the outermost electron of the sodium atom can play in the chlorine circle. You see everything will be satisfactory if an electron can be shared by the two atoms. That can happen only if the two atoms stay together; that is, if they form a molecule. That's why there are molecules and that's what I meant when I spoke of the molecule as a big game played by the electrons of two or more atoms.

This molecule which is formed by a sodium atom and a chlorine atom is called a molecule of sodium chloride by chemists and a molecule of salt by most every one who eats it. Something strange happens when it dissolves. It wanders around between the water molecules and for some reason or other--we don't know exactly why--it decides to split up again into sodium and chlorine but it can't quite do it. The electron which joined the game about the chlorine nucleus won't leave it. The result is that the nucleus of the sodium atom gets away but it leaves this one electron behind.

What gets away isn't a sodium atom for it has one too few electrons; and what remains behind isn't a chlorine atom for it has one too many electrons. We call these new groups "ions" from a Greek word which means "to go" for they do go, wandering off into the spaces between the water molecules. Fig. 3 gives you an idea of what happens.

You remember that in an atom there are always just as many protons as electrons. In this sodium ion which is formed when the nucleus of the sodium atom breaks away but leaves behind one planetary electron, there is then one more proton than there are electrons. Because it has an extra proton, which hasn't any electron to associate with, we call it a plus ion or a "positive ion." Similarly we call the chlorine ion, which has one less proton than it has electrons, a minus or "negative ion."

Now, despite the fact that these ions broke away from each other they aren't really satisfied. Any time that the sodium ion can find an electron to take the place of the one it lost it will welcome it. That is, the sodium ion will want to go toward places where there are extra electrons. In the same way the chlorine ion will go toward places where electrons are wanted as if it could satisfy its guilty conscience by giving up the electron which it stole from the sodium atom, or at least by giving away some other electron, for they are all alike anyway.

Sometimes a positive sodium ion and a negative chlorine ion meet in their wanderings in the solution and both get satisfied by forming a molecule again. Even so they don't stay together long before they split apart and start wandering again. That's what goes on over and over again, millions of times, when you dissolve a little salt in a glass of water.

Now we can see what happens when copper sulphate dissolves. The copper atom has twenty-nine electrons about its nucleus and all except two of these are nicely grouped for playing their games about the nucleus. Two of the electrons are rather out of the game, and are unsatisfied. They play with the electrons of the part of the molecule which is called "sulphate," that is, the part formed by the sulphur atom and the four oxygen atoms. These five atoms of the sulphate part stay together very well and so we treat them as a group.

The sulphate group and the copper atom stay together as long as they are not in solution but when they are, they act very much like the sodium and chlorine which I just described. The molecule splits up into two ions, one positive and one negative. The positive ion is the copper part except that two of the electrons which really belong to a copper atom got left behind because the sulphate part wouldn't give them up. The rest of the molecule is the negative ion.

The copper ion is a copper atom which has lost two electrons. The sulphate ion is a combination of one sulphur atom, four oxygen atoms and two electrons which it stole from the copper atom. Just as the sodium ion is unsatisfied because in it there is one more proton than there are electrons, so the copper ion is unsatisfied. As a matter of fact it is twice as badly unsatisfied. It has two more protons than it has electrons. We say it has twice the "electrical charge" of the sodium ion.

Just like a sodium ion the copper ion will tend to go toward any place where there are extra electrons which it can get to satisfy its own needs. In much the same way the sulphate ion will go toward places where it can give up its two extra electrons. Sometimes, of course, as ions of these two kinds wander about between the water molecules, they meet and satisfy each other by forming a molecule of copper sulphate. But if they do they will split apart later on; that is, they will "dissociate" as we should say.

Now let's go on with the kind of batteries I used to make as a boy. You can see that in the solution of copper sulphate at the bottom of the jar there was always present a lot of positive copper ions and of negative sulphate ions.

On top of this solution of copper sulphate I poured very carefully a weak solution of sulphuric acid. As I told you, an acid always has hydrogen in its molecules. Sulphuric acid has molecules formed by two hydrogen atoms and one of the groups which we decided to call sulphate. A better name for this acid would be hydrogen sulphate for that would imply that its molecule is the same as one of copper sulphate, except that the place of the copper is taken by two atoms of hydrogen. It takes two atoms of hydrogen because the copper atom has two lonely electrons while a hydrogen atom only has one. It takes two electrons to fill up the game which the electrons of the sulphate group are playing. If it can get these from a single atom, all right; but if it has to get one from each of two atoms, it will do it that way.

I remember when I mixed the sulphuric acid with water that I learned to pour the acid into the water and not the other way around. Spatterings of sulphuric acid are not good for hands or clothes. With this solution I filled the jar almost to the top and then hung over the edge a sort of a crow's foot shape of cast zinc. The zinc reached down into the sulphuric acid solution. There was a binding post on it to which a wire could be connected. This wire and the one which came from the plate of copper at the bottom were the two terminals of the battery. We called the wire from the copper "positive" and the one from the zinc "negative."

Now we shall see why and how the battery worked. The molecules of sulphuric acid dissociate in solution just as do those of copper sulphate. When sulphuric acid molecules split, the sulphate part goes away with two electrons which don't belong to it and each of the hydrogen atoms goes away by itself but without its electron. We call each a "hydrogen ion" but you can see that each is a single proton.

In the two solutions are pieces of zinc and copper. Zinc is like all the rest of the metals in one way. Atoms of metals always have lonely electrons for which there doesn't seem to be room in the game which is going on around their nuclei. Copper as we saw has two lonely electrons in each atom. Zinc also has two. Some metals have one and some two and some even more lonely electrons in each atom.

What happens then is this. The sulphate ions wandering around in the weak solution of sulphuric acid come along beside the zinc plate and beckon to its atoms. The sulphate ions had a great deal rather play the game called "zinc sulphate" than the game called "hydrogen sulphate." So the zinc atoms leave their places to join with the sulphate ions. But wait a minute! The sulphate ions have two extra electrons which they kept from the hydrogen atoms. They don't need the two lonely electrons which each zinc atom could bring and so the zinc atom leaves behind it these unnecessary electrons.

Every time a zinc atom leaves the plate it fails to take all its electrons with it. What leaves the zinc plate, therefore, to go into solution is really not a zinc atom but is a zinc ion; that is, it is the nucleus of a zinc atom and all except two of the planetary electrons.

Every time a zinc ion leaves the plate there are left behind two electrons. The plate doesn't want them for all the rest of its atoms have just the same number of protons as of electrons. Where are they to go? We shall see in a minute.

Sometimes the zinc ions which have got into solution meet with sulphate ions and form zinc sulphate molecules. But if they do these molecules split up sooner or later into ions again. In the upper part of the liquid in the jar, therefore, there are sulphate ions which are negative and two kinds of positive ions, namely, the hydrogen ions and the zinc ions.

Before the zinc ions began to crowd in there were just enough hydrogen ions to go with the sulphate ions. As it is, the entrance of the zinc ions has increased the number of positive ions and now there are too many. Some of the positive ions, therefore, and particularly the hydrogen ions, because the sulphate prefers to associate with the zinc ions, can't find enough playfellows and so go down in the jar.

Down in the bottom of the jar the hydrogen ions find more sulphate ions to play with, but that leaves the copper ions which used to play with these sulphate ions without any playmates. So the copper ions go still further down and join with the copper atoms of the copper plate. They haven't much right to do so, for you remember that they haven't their proper number of electrons. Each copper ion lacks two electrons of being a copper atom. Nevertheless they join the copper plate. The result is a plate of copper which has too few electrons. It needs two electrons for every copper ion which joins it.

How about the zinc plate? You remember that it has two electrons more than it needs for every zinc ion which has left it. If only the extra electrons on the negative zinc plate could get around to the positive copper plate. They can if we connect a wire from one plate to the other. Then the electrons from the zinc stream into the spaces between the atoms of the wire and push ahead of them the electrons which are wandering around in these spaces. At the other end an equal number of electrons leave the wire to satisfy the positive copper plate. So we have a stream of electrons in the wire, that is, a current of electricity and our battery is working.

That's the sort of a battery I used to play with. If you understand it you can get the general idea of all batteries. Let me express it in general terms.

At the negative plate of a battery ions go into solution and electrons are left behind. At the other end of the battery positive ions are crowded out of solution and join the plate where they cause a scarcity of electrons; that is, make the plate positive. If a wire is connected between the two plates, electrons will stream through it from the negative plate to the positive; and this stream is a current of electricity.

THE BATTERIES IN YOUR RADIO SET

(This letter may be omitted on the first reading.)

You will need several batteries when you come to set up your radio receiver but you won't use such clumsy affairs as the gravity cell which I described in my last letter. Some of your batteries will be dry batteries of the size used in pocket flash lights.

These are not really dry, for between the plates they are filled with a moist paste which is then sealed in with wax to keep it from drying out or from spilling. Instead of zinc and copper these batteries use zinc and carbon. No glass jar is needed, for the zinc is formed into a jar shape. In this is placed the paste and in the center of the paste a rod or bar of carbon. The paste doesn't contain sulphuric acid, but instead has in it a stuff called sal ammoniac; that is, ammonium chloride.

The battery, however, acts very much like the one I described in my last letter. Ions of zinc leave the zinc and wander into the moist paste. These ions are positive, just as in the case of the gravity battery. The result is that the electrons which used to associate with a zinc ion to form a zinc atom are left in the zinc plate. That makes the zinc negative for it has more electrons than protons. The zinc ions take the place of the positive ions which are already in the paste. The positive ions which originally belonged with the paste, therefore, move along to the carbon rod and there get some electrons. Taking electrons away from the carbon leaves it with too many protons; that is, leaves it positive. In the little flash light batteries, therefore, you will always find that the round carbon rod, which sticks out of the center, is positive and the zinc casing is negative.

The trouble with the battery like the one I used to make is that the zinc plate wastes away. Every time a zinc ion leaves it that means that the greater part of an atom is gone. Then when the two electrons which were left behind get a chance to start along a copper wire toward the positive plate of the battery there goes the rest of the atom. After a while there is no more zinc plate. It is easy to see what has happened. All the zinc has gone into solution or been "eaten away" as most people say. Dry batteries, however, don't stop working because the zinc gets used up, but because the active stuff in the paste, the ammonium chloride, is changed into something else.

There's another kind of battery which you will need to use with your radio set; that is the storage battery. Storage batteries can be used over and over again if they are charged between times and will last for a long time if properly cared for. Then too, they can give a large current, that is, a big swift-moving stream of electrons. You will need that when you wish to heat the filament of the audion in your receiving set.

The English call our storage batteries by the name "accumulators." I don't like that name at all, but I don't like our name for them nearly as well as I do the name "reversible batteries." Nobody uses this last name because it's too late to change. Nevertheless a storage battery is reversible, for it will work either way at an instant's notice.

A storage battery is something like a boy's wagon on a hill side. It will run down hill but it can be pushed up again for another descent. You can use it to send a stream of electrons through a wire from its negative plate to its positive plate. Then if you connect these plates to some other battery or to a generator, (that is, a dynamo) you can make a stream of electrons go in the other direction. When you have done so long enough the battery is charged again and ready to discharge.