Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/528

524 discharge through helium in which there is a strong line, 6, which could be explained by the compound, but, as I have never again been able to get these lines, I do not wish to lay much stress on this point. There is, however, the possibility that we may be interpreting Mendeleef's law too rigidly, and that in the neighborhood of the atomic weight of neon there may be a group of two or more elements with similar properties, just as in another part of the table we have the group iron, nickel and cobalt. From the relative intensities of the 22 line and the neon line we may conclude that the quantity of the gas giving the 22 line is only a small fraction of the quantity of neon.

Let me direct your attention again to the photograph of the heavier gases in the atmosphere. You will notice that the parabolas corresponding to many of the elements start from points which are all in the same vertical line; this indicates that the atoms or molecules which form these parabolas all carry the same charge. Several of these lines, however, do not follow this rule; you will notice, for example, that the neon line has a prolongation which comes nearer than the normal line to the vertical line drawn through the undeflected spot. Measurement of the photograph shows that the neon line begins at a distance from this vertical line which is only half the normal distance; this shows that some of the neon atoms in the positive rings possess two charges of electricity; the majority of them, however, only possess one. If you examine the argon line you will find that it comes even nearer to the vertical than the neon line, in fact, it begins at a distance from the vertical only one third of the normal distance; this proves that the argon atom can have as many as three charges of electricity. If now you examine the krypton line you will find that it comes nearer to the vertical line than even the argon; its least distance is one fourth of the normal distance, showing that the krypton atom may have as many as four charges. The mercury line comes so close to the vertical line that it is only on large photographs that it can be seen that there is in reality an interval; this interval is only one eighth of the normal interval, showing that mercury may acquire eight positive charges, i. e., that it may lose eight corpuscles. The mercury atom when it is on this line must have only the normal charge, i. e., it must have regained all but one of the corpuscles it previously lost; if it had retained two positive charges it would have been on the line corresponding to the atomic weight 200/2 or 100: if it had retained 3, or 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 on the lines corresponding to the atomic weights, 200/3, 200/4, 200/5, 200/6, 200/7, 200/8 respectively. All these except the last have been detected on the plate. The lines corresponding to the multiple charges on krypton, argon and neon have also been detected. It appears, then, that in a vacuum tube a mercury atom, for example, may be ionized in two ways; in the one way the atom loses one corpuscle, in the other it loses eight.