The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium / by Hon. R.J. Strutt.

  • Rayleigh Robert John Strutt Lord, 1875-
Date:
1904
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium / by Hon. R.J. Strutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    proportion of atoms which are in the act of decom- posing at any given moment is very small. The decomposition must be the result of a conjunction of circumstances within the atom which is of extremely unlikely, and consequently rare, occur- rence. What those circumstances are, we do not yet know. From this point of view, it will not be difficult to understand that what is a very rare event in the case of a radium atom, may be much rarer still in the case of an atom of the allied metals, so rare, in fact, that it may never occur at all within human experience. So far, after all, the absence of radio-activity does not necessarily imply any great structural difference between the two kinds of atoms. With regard to the elements not recognised to be radio-active, there are several remarks to be made. In the first place, as we have seen, every obtainable material shows some traces of radio- activity. But there is difficulty in feeling sure that this is not due to traces of radium contained in it as an impurity. For different samples of the same substance seem to differ very greatly in activity. One piece of tinfoil, for instance, may give double the radio-active effect of another. Still, it is possible that some of the activity is really due to a specific property of the element in question. We have seen that in some cases, inactive products are formed by radio-active change, which themselves yield radio-active products by further change. This occurs in the course of degradation of the active deposits of radium and thorium. Professor Ruther- ford has very aptly remarked that the ordinary inactive chemical elements may represent such in- active phases, and that they may, none the less, be