A critical examination of the Benedicks homogeneous thermoelectric effect

Abstract

Although the existence of an electromotive force in apparently homogeneous circuits under asymmetrical temperature distributions has been questioned by only a minority of workers in this field, all attempts at explaining the effect have been little more than speculations. These speculations may be divided roughly into two types, first(2), those which agree with the contention of Benedicks that the E.M.F. is an essentially new effect not explicable in terms of the classical theory of Kelvin, and secondly(3), those which contend that the effect is essentially spurious, to be explained away as due either to hidden sources of error, or to unsuspected heterogeneities in the circuit. The somewhat fantastic claim of Benedicks' school that the effect was an inverse of the Thomson effect, which proved entirely false upon examination in the light of Sommerfeld's work(4), did much to increase scepticism. Benedicks' later claim to have found yet another inverse of his original effect(5), the “electro-thermal” effect, has also been refuted(6), and this does not inspire confidence in the genuine nature of the original effect.