Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 69.djvu/435

Rh distance, retains its property of communicating radio-activity to other bodies. He explains these phenomena by supposing that thoria gives oft' a special kind of emanation capable of being conveyed by the air, and that this is the cause of the induced radio-activity.

To ascertain if the electrons or corpuscles from radium also possess the property of being carried along in a current of air, I fitted up an apparatus shown in fig. 2. A, B, and C are three brass tubes closed

FIG. 2. Elevation.

at the lower end and cemented with paraffin to a wooden block. The upper ends were accurately ground to a level surface, and then coated with a thin layer of paraffin wax. Holes were drilled in B and C, to admit glass tubes, cemented air-tight into the cylinders, as shown in the figure. The upper end of the tube in B was closed with a plug of cotton wool, and the outer end in C was connected to a water-pump, so that when the cylinders were closed at the top a current of air was drawn through B and C. As the radium compound was self-luminous, discs of thin aluminium foil were placed over cylinders A and B to cut off the luminous rays. A sensitive film was laid on the three cylinders over the aluminium, and it was tightly pressed down by a heavy weight ; the contact between the film and the tops of the cylinders being suffi- cient to make the whole air-tight. At the bottom of A and B a radium compound was placed, equal weights and equal surface in each. The whole was put into a light-tight box, and air drawn through. The cylinder A was used only as a standard. The air passing into B was expected to carry along with it some of the corpuscles emitted from the active material at the bottom ; and the inlet tube in C was turned up at the end, so that the stream of corpuscles-laden air should impinge on the surface of the centre of the film on C, and if it carried with it any radio-active properties the result should be seen on development,