There is so far but little information regarding the manner of variation
of the radiation of radio-active bodies with temperature. We know,
however, that radiation subsists at low temperatures. M. Curie placed a
glass tube containing barium-radium chloride in liquid air. The
luminosity of the radio-active body persisted under these conditions. At
the moment, indeed, of removing the tube from the cold bath, it appears
more luminous than at the ordinary temperature. At the temperature of
liquid air radium continues to cause fluorescence in the sulphates of
uranium and potassium. M. Curie has verified, by electrical
determinations, that the radiation, measured at a certain distance from
the source, possesses the same intensity whether the radium be at the
temperature of the atmosphere or of liquid air. In these experiments the
radium was placed at the bottom of a tube closed at one end. The rays
emerged from the tube at the open end, traversed a certain space in the
air, and were received into a condenser. The action of the rays upon the
air of the condenser was determined both on leaving the tube in the air
and on surrounding it to a certain height with liquid air. The same
result was obtained in both cases.
The radio-activity of radium persists at high temperatures.
Barium-radium chloride after being fused (towards 800°) is radio-active
and luminous. However, prolonged heating at a high temperature has the
effect of temporarily lowering the radio-activity of the body. This
decrease is very considerable; it may constitute 75 per cent of the
total radiation. The decrease is less in proportion for the absorbable
rays than for the penetrating rays, which are to some extent suppressed
by heating. In time the radiation of the product regains the intensity
and composition that it possessed before heating; this occurs after the
lapse of about two months from the occasion of heating.
CHAPTER IV.
COMMUNICATION OF RADIO-ACTIVITY TO SUBSTANCES INITIALLY INACTIVE.
During the course of our researches on radio-active substances M. Curie
and I have observed that every substance which remains for some time in
the vicinity of a radium salt becomes itself radio-active. In our first
publication on this subject, we confined ourselves to proving that the
radio-activity thus acquired by substances initially inactive is not due
to the transference of radio-active particles to the surface of these
substances. This is proved beyond dispute by all the experiments which
will be here described, and by the laws according to which the
radio-activity excited in naturally inactive bodies disappears when the
latter are removed from the influence of radium.
We have given the name of _induced radio-activity_ to the new phenomenon
thus discovered.
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