The surprising amount of energy which can be collected from gases after the electric discharge has passed

Abstract
It was found in earlier work (Rayleigh 1940 b ) that a piece of gold sheet, say 1 cm. square, hung up in a stream of glowing active nitrogen became red hot, and collected an amount of energy which was very surprising. It was necessary to assume that every molecule of nitrogen in the stream imparted 10 eV to the gold plate. In this form of experiment it was impossible to avoid large and undetermined losses of energy; thus the energy actually given up by each molecule was probably much larger still. A new form of experiment is now described in which this loss is avoided. A platinum strip is kept hot by periodic discharges, and by making the experiment (1) with the platinum exposed to the gas and (2) with the platinum protected by a thin glass sheath it is possible to determine what part of the total energy is to be attributed to catalytic action of the discharge products. This amount of energy is found to be very great. Reckoning in electron-volts per molecule of gas present it increased rapidly as the gas pressure was lowered and at the lowest pressure used it rose as high as 223 eV/mol. Results of the same order were obtained with other gases, so it is not clear that the glow of active nitrogen is the essential condition. This great liberation of energy much exceeds what can be explained by dissociation of the molecules and single ionization of every atom which results, which would only afford 36 V.
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