Radio-activity / by E. Rutherford.

  • Ernest Rutherford
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Radio-activity / by E. Rutherford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/426 (page 2)
    complicated phenomena observed when a discharge of electricity passes through a vacuum tube. At the same time, a further study of the cathode rays showed that they consisted of a stream of material particles, projected with great velocity, and possessing an apparent mass small compared with that of the hydrogen atom. The connection between the cathode and Rontgen rays and the nature of the latter were also elucidated. Much of this admirable experimental work on the nature of the electric discharge has been done by Professor J. J. Thomson and his students in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. An examination of natural substances, in order to see if they gave out dark radiations similar to X rays, led to the discovery of the radio-active bodies which possess the property of spontaneously emitting radiations, invisible to the eye, but readily detected by their action on photographic plates and their power of discharging electrified bodies. A detailed study of the radio-active bodies has led to the discovery of many new and surprising phenomena which have thrown much light, not only on the nature of the radiations themselves, but also on the processes occurring in those substances. Notwithstanding the complex nature of the phenomena, the know¬ ledge of the subject has advanced with great rapidity, and a large amount of experimental data has now been accumulated. In order to explain the phenomena of radio-activity, a theory has been put forward which regards the atoms of the radio-active elements as suffering spontaneous disintegration, and giving rise to a series of radio-active substances which differ in chemical properties from the parent elements. The radiations accompany the breaking-up of the atoms, and afford a comparative measure of the rate at which the disintegration takes place. This theory is found to account in a satisfactory way for all the known facts of radio-activity, and welds a mass of disconnected facts into one homogeneous whole. On this view, the continuous emission of energy from the active bodies is derived from the internal energy inherent in the atom, and does not in any way contradict the law of the conservation of energy. At the same time, however, it indicates that an enormous store of latent energy is resident in the radio-atoms themselves. This store of energy has previously not been observed, on account of the impossibility of breaking up into