Temperature has a very marked effect on the emanating power. The
writer[245] showed that the emanating power of ordinary thoria was
increased three to four times by heating the substance to a dull red
heat in a platinum tube. If the temperature was kept constant the
emanation continued to escape at the increased rate, but returned to its
original value on cooling. If, however, the compound was heated to a
white heat, the emanating power was greatly reduced, and it returned on
cooling to about 10% of the original value. Such a compound is said to
be _de-emanated_. The emanating power of radium compounds varies in a
still more striking manner with rise of temperature. The rate of escape
of the emanation is momentarily increased even 10,000 times by heating
to a dull red heat. This effect does not continue, for the large escape
of the emanation by heating is in reality due to the release of the
emanation stored up in the radium compound. Like thoria, when the
compound has once been heated to a very high temperature, it loses its
emanating power and does not regain it. It regains its power of
emanating, however, after solution and re-separation.
A further examination of the effect of temperature was made by
Rutherford and Soddy[246]. The emanating power of thoria decreases very
rapidly with lowering of temperature, and at the temperature of solid
carbonic acid it is only about 10% of its ordinary value. It rapidly
returns to its original value when the cooling agent is removed.
Increase of temperature from 80° C. to a dull red heat of platinum thus
increases the emanating power about 40 times, and the effects can be
repeated again and again, with the same compound, provided the
temperature is not raised to the temperature at which de-emanation
begins. De-emanation sets in above a red heat, and the emanating power
is then permanently diminished, but even long-continued heating at a
white heat never entirely destroys the emanating power.
=151. Regeneration of emanating power.= An interesting question arises
whether the de-emanation of thorium and radium is due to a removal or
alteration of the substance which produces the emanation, or whether
intense ignition merely changes the rate of escape of the emanation from
the solid into the surrounding atmosphere.
It is evident that the physical properties of the thoria are much
altered by intense ignition. The compound changes in colour from white
to pink; it becomes denser and also far less readily soluble in acids.
In order to test if the emanating power could be regenerated by a cyclic
chemical process, the de-emanated thoria was dissolved, precipitated as
hydroxide and again converted into oxide. At the same time a specimen of
the ordinary oxide was subjected to an exactly parallel process. The
emanating power of both these compounds was the same, and was from two
to three times greater than that of ordinary thoria.
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