Page:Radio-active substances.djvu/39

 contained no radium; this substance is, consequently, absent from the ores of barium.

In order to investigate the radiation emitted by radioactive bodies, any one of the properties of this radiation can be utilised. Thus the action of the rays on photographic plates may serve, or their property of ionisation of the air, which renders it a conductor, or their capacity for causing fluorescence of certain bodies. Henceforth, in speaking of these different methods of working, I shall use the expressions radiographic method, electrical method, fluoroscopic method.

The first two have been used from the beginning in the study of uranium rays; the fluoroscopic method can only be applied in the case of the new bodies which are strongly radio-active, for the feebly active bodies such as uranium and thorium produce no appreciable fluorescence. The electrical method is the only one which serves for exact determinations of intensity; the other two are specially adapted for giving qualitative results, and only furnish rough approximations. The results obtained with the three methods just considered are not strictly comparable the one with the other. The sensitive plate, the gas which is ionised, the fluorescent screen, are in reality receivers, which absorb the energy of the radiation, and transform it into another kind of energy, chemical energy, ionic energy, or luminous energy. Each receiver absorbs a fraction of the radiation, which depends essentially upon its nature. Later on, we shall see that the radiation is complex, that the fractions of the radiation absorbed by the different receivers may differ among themselves both quantitatively and qualitatively. Finally, it is neither evident, nor even probable, that the energy absorbed is entirely transformed by the receiver into the form that we wish for observation; part of this energy may be transformed into heat, into the evolution of secondary radiations which may or may not assist in the production of the observed phenomenon, into chemical action which differs from that under observation, &c., and here also the effective action of the receiver, with reference to the end we have in view, depends essentially upon the nature of that receiver.

Let us compare two radio-active substances, one