The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium / by R.J. Strutt.

  • Rayleigh, Robert John Strutt, Baron, 1875-1947.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium / by R.J. Strutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    charges of negative electricity, without any material substratum. It is too soon to accept this conclusion without reserve, for the assumptions involved in the calculations are dubious, and the accuracy attainable in the experiments is not sufficient to put the theory to a very severe test. But, when all this has been admitted, the simpUcity of the conclusion is very attractive, and it has gained a great deal of support during the last two years from current scientific opinion. There is one misconception which must be carefully guarded against. In speaking of the mass of a charged particle, the effects of inertia have alone been referred to. It is an undeniable inference from known facts that the inertia of a body must be greater when it is electrified. It necessarily becomes more difficult to set in motion than before, though, in any case within ordinary experience, their increase would be too small to detect. We could not, for instance, give any electric charge to a rifle bullet which would make its inertia measurably greater. But, in the light of electrical theory, there is no doubt at all that the inertia has really been increased. When we come to consider the weight of the body, the force, that is, with which the earth attracts it, we have no means of judging whether or not the electrification produces any effect.^ In all ordinary cases inertia and weight are inseparably associated. But whether the inertia of electrical origin is accom- panied by corresponding weight, we do not know at all. No experiment has been devised by which the question can be tested. Indeed, as we do not know why gravitation accompanies ordinary inertia, it is not surprising that we are unable to decide theoretically ^ The electrical attraction on surrounding conductors has, of course, nothing to do with this.