The amount of excited activity produced on a body increases at first
with the time, but reaches a maximum after an exposure of several days.
An example of the results is given in the following table. In this
experiment a rod was made the cathode in a closed vessel containing
thoria. It was removed at intervals for the short time necessary to test
its activity and then replaced.
Time in Current
hours
1·58 6·3
3·25 10·5
5·83 29
9·83 40
14·00 59
23·41 77
29·83 83
47·00 90
72·50 95
96·00 100
These results are shown graphically in Curve _B_, Fig. 64. It is seen
that the decay and recovery curves may be represented approximately by
the following equations.
For the decay curve _A_,
$$ \frac {I} {I₀} = e^{–λt} $$ .
For the recovery curve _B_,
$$ \frac {I} {I₀} = 1 − e^{–λt} $$ .
The two curves are thus complementary to one another; they are connected
in the same way as the decay and recovery curves of Ur X, and are
susceptible of a similar explanation.
The amount of excited radio-activity reaches a maximum value when the
rate of supply of fresh radio-active particles balances the rate of
change of those already deposited.
=180. Excited radio-activity produced by a short exposure.= The initial
portion of the recovery curve _B_, Fig. 64, is not accurately
represented by the above equation. The activity for the first few hours
increases more slowly than would be expected from the equation. This
result, however, is completely explained in the light of later results.
The writer[273] found that, for a _short exposure_ of a body to the
thorium emanation, the excited activity upon it after removal, instead
of at once decaying at the normal rate, _increased_ for several hours.
In some cases the activity of the body increased to three or four times
its original value in the course of a few hours and then decayed with
the time at the normal rate.
For an exposure of 41 minutes to the emanation the excited activity
after removal rose to three times its initial value in about 3 hours and
then fell again at about the normal rate to half value in 11 hours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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