Page:Radio-active substances.djvu/82

 duration of action, &c.). The law of dissipation remains the same for any temperature between −180° and +450°. The law is therefore altogether characteristic.

In these experiments it is the radio-active energy accumulated in the gas that maintains the activity of the walls. If the gas be withdrawn and a vacuum caused in the enclosure, we have found that dissipation of activity at once occurs in the rapid method; the intensity of radiation being reduced to one-half in twenty-eight minutes. The same result is obtained when ordinary air is substituted for the active air in the enclosure.

The law of dissipation with reduction of intensity of radiation to one-half in four days, is therefore characteristic of the disappearance of radio-active energy accumulated in the gas. By making use of the expression adopted by Mr. Rutherford, the emanation from radium may be said to disappear spontaneously as a function of the time, with reduction to one-half in four days.

The emanation from thorium is of another kind, and disappears much more rapidly. The intensity of radiation diminishes to one-half in about one minute ten seconds.

The emanation from actinium disappears still more rapidly; reduction to one-half takes place in a few seconds.

Any liquid whatever becomes radio-active when placed in an active confined space. On being removed and left freely exposed to the air, the liquid rapidly loses its activity, imparting it to the gas and solid bodies surrounding it. If a liquid thus made active be placed in a closed flask, it loses its activity much more slowly; the latter being reduced in intensity to one-half in four days, just as would a gas under similar circumstances. This fact may be explained by assuming that the radio-active energy is stored in liquids in exactly the same form as in gases (in the form of an emanation).

A solution of a radium salt behaves in a somewhat similar manner. At first, it is a remarkable fact that the solution of a radium salt placed for some time in a confined space is no more active than pure water placed in a vessel in the same enclosure, when the equilibrium of activity is established. If the radium solution be removed from the enclosure and left standing in the air in a wide-necked vessel, the activity spreads itself into space, and the solution becomes nearly inactive, though still containing radium.