Professor Ostwald has shown, in particular, how this hypothesis permits the quantitative calculation of the conditions of equilibrium of electrolytes and solutions, and especially of the phenomena of neutralization.

If a dissolved salt is partly dissociated into ions, this solution must be limited by an equilibrium between the non-dissociated molecule and the two ions resulting from the dissociation; and, assimilating the phenomenon to the case of gases, we may take for its study the laws of Gibbs and of Guldberg and Waage.

The results are generally very satisfactory, and new researches daily furnish new checks.
Professor Nernst, who before gave, as has been said, a remarkable interpretation of the diffusion of electrolytes, has, in the direction pointed out by M.Arrhenius, developed a theory of the entire phenomena of electrolysis, which, in particular, furnishes a striking explanation of the mechanism of the production of electromotive force in galvanic batteries.
Extending the analogy, already so happily invoked, between the phenomena met with in solutions and those produced in gases, Professor Nernst supposes that metals tend, as it were, to vaporize when in presence of a liquid.

A piece of zinc introduced, for example, into pure water gives birth to a few metallic ions.

These ions become positively charged, while the metal naturally takes an equal charge, but of contrary sign.