. The Hahnemannian monthly . Fig. 5. Spinthariscope of Sir William Crookes. a dark room, the screen is observed after the eye hasbecome accustomed to the darkness, bright momentaryflashes of light or scintillations too numerous at anyinstant to count, are appearing and disappearing in thefield of vision (Fig. 6). This minute trace of radium isconstantly belching forth alpha particles. Professor Woodstated that the luminosity did not last more than one-forty-thousandth of a second. After a time the phosphorescent igi6. Radium and Its Physical Properties. 343 screen will be worn out by the inces
. The Hahnemannian monthly . Fig. 5. Spinthariscope of Sir William Crookes. a dark room, the screen is observed after the eye hasbecome accustomed to the darkness, bright momentaryflashes of light or scintillations too numerous at anyinstant to count, are appearing and disappearing in thefield of vision (Fig. 6). This minute trace of radium isconstantly belching forth alpha particles. Professor Woodstated that the luminosity did not last more than one-forty-thousandth of a second. After a time the phosphorescent igi6. Radium and Its Physical Properties. 343 screen will be worn out by the incessant bombardment, butreplaced by a new one, the radium will be found to be as ener-getic as ever. The owner of the instrument will pass away,his heirs and their successors and even his race will probablyhave been forgotten before the radium shows any appreciablesign of exhaustion. The philosophers of only two decades ago would haveridiculed the hope that we should ever be able to look through. Fig. 6. a magnifying glass to see the effect of a single atom of matter,yet each of the scintillations in the spinthariscope is nothingelse. THE EMANATION OF RADIUM. Radium is not constant. One-half of any given quantity ofradium will have disintegrated, according to Prof. Rutherford,in about 2,000 years. The first disintegration product of radiumis a gas which is intensely radio-active (Fig. 7). This gas hasbeen named by Prof. Rutherford The Emanation. (NitonE. Ramsey). This new radio-active gas does not enter intochemical combination with other elements and belongs there- 344 The Hahnemannian Monthly. [May, fore in the group of the inert gases, such as Helium, Argon,Xenon, Neon and Krypton. When an atom of radium disin-tegrates, an atom of Helium and an atom of emanation aresimultaneously formed. The radium atom, minus an alpha par-ticle, becomes the new substance, emanation. The emanation,weight for weight, is about one hundred thousand times asactive as the radium from which it is
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