WONDERS OF RADIUM.

Bruce Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 41, 26 May 1910, Page 4

WONDERS OF RADIUM.

MODERN ALCHEMY. THE CONCENTRATION OF ENERGY The chief guest of the evening at the Authors' Club dinner was Sir William Ramsay. The chairman, Mr Rider Haggard, in proposing his health, described him as the greatest of alchemists. In passing, Mr Haggard called attention to the fact that in his own novel "She" he had invented an element which had some of the characteristics of radium. It was thus that the imagination of to-day became the fact of to-morrow.

In replying to the toast, Sir William Ramsay said it was the chief aim of scientists to make authors' predictions come true. (Laughter.) Taking as his text "The Concentration of Energy," he said that the whole of human material progress consisted in the power to concentrate energy in the first place, and in the second to raise what was called the economic co-efficient. The word radio-activity was a new word; in fact, the French Academy had not yet decided on its gender. (Laughter.) He mentioned the fact because the Academy had just decided that the word "automobile" was masculine.

There were three kinds of rays emanating from radium (continued the speaker)—the alpha, beta, and gamma rays. The first kind could easily be bottled, for the alpha rays were due to a gas which could not escape unless the stopper of the bottle were removed. The beta rays were also particles, but very small, and moving with enormous velocity; whereas the gamma rays were not particles, but mere waves in the ethereal medium which surrounded us, and were analogous to light. Professor Rutherford and another scientist supposed that radium changed entirely into different products, emitting at various stages of its decomposition alpha particles. The change appeared to bo into gas.

"How long would radium last if it were always changing into that gas?" My answer, Sir "William said, is 'For ever.' The amount given off is always proportional to the amount of radium there. We can tell, however, how long it will take for radium to half-change into the emanations, and the time we have just measured in our laboratory is 1750 years. Sir "William mentioned that to facilitate him in carrying out experiments the Australian Government lent him a small quantity of radium, which was worth £9OOO, and which he was unable to get insured. He could not say where it was. (Laughter.) Radium could be squeezed into a tube finer than the finest thermometer tube. Its emanations went on changing into other things, each of which had a name. There was radium A, which lived for a quarter of an hour, and then changed into Radium B, which, in its turn, lived for three-quarters of an hour. Radium C lived for half an hour, and in the course of two or three hours all those substances had been produced and had disappeared. Then came a fairly longlived substance, Radium D, which was half gone in 40 years. It gave one time to look at it, and it was a lead-like substance, with a metallic lustre. Then there was radium El and E2, and Radium F, which was probably identical with the polonium discovered by Madame Curie in pitchblende. They had the greatest concentrated energy known and he doubted if they would ever get any greater. Scientists, however, were always in a state of doubt, and he doubted his own assertions. (Laughter.) In conclusion, said Sir "William Ramsay, though it was very doubtful if radium could cure cancer, it was quite certain that it could cure rodent ulcer, and that fact should bo widely known.