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POLARITY IN MATTER
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The polarity of chemical elements manifests itself in different ways. In some cases it appears like that of & magnet with two opposite poles. Thus oxygen is bi-polar. Others, like hydrogen and chlorine, seem to have only a single pole, and have to create for thenselves the opposite pole, which is the indispensable condition of all polarity, by induction in another body. Other atoms are multi-polar and seem as if made up of more than one magnet or rather as if the atom bad regular shape like a triangle, square, or pentagon, and each angle was a pole thus enabling it to unite with three, four, five or more atoms of other substances. Thus one atom of nitrogen unites with three of hydrogen, one of carbon with four of hydrogen, and so on.
Every substance has, therefore, what is called 'quantivalence' or power of uniting with it a greater or less quantity of other atoms, and conversely that of replacing in combinations other aloms, or groups of atoms, the sum of whose quantivalence equals its own.
Polarity involves opposition of relations or two poles, and electrical only differs from magnetic polarity in the fact that in the latter the two poles are in the same body, while in the former they are in separate bodies.. Atoms and radicals, which are multi-polar, can attract and form molecules with as many other atoms or radicals as they have poles. This is called their deree of atomnity, which is the same as their quantivalence. The quantities of substances depend oo: only on the
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