Page:Radio-active substances.djvu/86

 these active bodies are concentrated, the case is no longer the same; each chemical separation no longer furnishes absolutely inactive products; all the resulting products of a separation are active in varying degrees.

After the discovery of induced radio-activity, M. Giesel was the first to attempt to excite activity in ordinary inactive bismuth by keeping it in solution with very active radium. He thus obtained radio-active bismuth, and from this he concluded that the polonium extracted from pitchblende was probably bismuth made active by the vicinity of the radium contained in the pitchblende.

I have also prepared active bismuth by keeping bismuth in solution with a very active radium salt.

The difficulties of this experiment consist in the extreme precautions which must be taken to remove all traces of radium from the solution. If we realise what an infinitesimal quantity of radium suffices to produce very considerable radio-activity in 1 grm. of material, it is difficult to believe in the possibility of sufficiently washing and purifying the active product. Each purification causes a diminution of activity of the product, whether this be due to removal of traces of radium or that the induced radio-activity is, under these circumstances, not proof against chemical reactions.

The results I obtained appear, however, to establish with certainty the fact that the activity is produced and persists after the radium is removed. On fractionating the nitrate of my active bismuth by precipitation with water from the nitric acid solution, I found that after careful purifying it fractionated like polonium, the most active portion being precipitated first.

If the purification is not complete the opposite occurs, showing that traces of radium still remain. I thus obtained active bismuth which from the manner of fractionation showed great purity and which was 2000 times as active as uranium. This bismuth diminishes in activity with lapse of time. But another portion of the same product, prepared with the same precautions, and fractionating in the same manner, preserves its activity without diminution for actually a period of about three years.

This activity is 150 times as great as that of uranium.

I have also prepared active lead and silver by leaving them in solution with radium. Generally induced radioactivity obtained in this way scarcely lessens with lapse of time, but it does not as a rule withstand many successive chemical changes of the active body.