Page:Radio-activity.djvu/467

 and physical properties from each other and from the parent element, but also for the emission of rays of a special character. Besides this, it is necessary to account for the large amount of energy continuously radiated from the radio-elements.

The radio-elements, besides their high atomic weights, do not possess in common any special chemical characteristics which differentiate them from the other elements, which do not possess the property of radio-activity to an appreciable degree. Of all the known elements, uranium, thorium, and radium possess the greatest atomic weights, viz.: radium 225, thorium 232·5, and uranium 240.

If a high atomic weight is taken as evidence of a complicated structure of the atom, it might be expected that disintegration would occur more readily in heavy than in light atoms. At the same time, there is no reason to suppose that the elements of the highest atomic weight must be the most radio-active; in fact, radium is far more active than uranium, although its atomic weight is less. This is seen to be the case also in the radio-active products; for example, the radium emanation is enormously more active weight for weight than the radium itself, and there is every reason to believe that the emanation has an atom lighter than that of radium.

In order to explain the phenomena of radio-activity, Rutherford and Soddy have advanced the theory that the atoms of the radio-elements suffer spontaneous disintegration, and that each disintegrated atom passes through a succession of well-marked changes, accompanied in most cases by the emission of α rays.

A preliminary account of this hypothesis has already been given in section 136, while the mathematical theory of successive changes, which is based upon it, has been discussed in chapter. The general theory has been utilized in chapters and  to account for the numerous active substances found in uranium, thorium, actinium and radium.

The theory supposes that, on an average, a definite small proportion of the atoms of each radio-active substance becomes unstable at a given time. As a result of this instability, the atoms break up. In most cases, the disintegration is explosive in violence and is accompanied by the ejection of an α particle with