. The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium. lecule. Thepositive matrix in which the corpuscles are immersedwill attract them to its centre. On the other hand,they will be repelled electrostatically from oneanother. There might, indeed, be static equilibriumunder forces of this kind. But on such a view itis difficult to understand how there should be anyelement of instability in the atom, such as mightaccount for the phenomena of radio-activity. More-over, stationary clusters of corpuscles could not emitvibrations with characteristic periods, as the atomdoes in yielding a spectrum. It is
. The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium. lecule. Thepositive matrix in which the corpuscles are immersedwill attract them to its centre. On the other hand,they will be repelled electrostatically from oneanother. There might, indeed, be static equilibriumunder forces of this kind. But on such a view itis difficult to understand how there should be anyelement of instability in the atom, such as mightaccount for the phenomena of radio-activity. More-over, stationary clusters of corpuscles could not emitvibrations with characteristic periods, as the atomdoes in yielding a spectrum. It is believed, therefore,that the corpuscles in an atom are in a state ofrapid rotation about the centre. This view wouldstrengthen the analogy between the constitution ofan atom and that of the planetary system, to whichattention has already been drawn. To deal by direct calculation with systems of 1000corpuscles, which might be distributed anyhow inthree-dimensioned space within the matrix, wouldprobably be impracticable. By dealing with a PLATE ^r
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectradiati, bookyear1906
