WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 68, 17 February 1939, Page 9

WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

RADIO-ACTIVITY. Among the outstanding achievements of this century must be mentioned what is known as radio-activity. A substance is said to be radioactive when it has the peculiar property of emitting radiations capable of passing through sheets of metal or other substances which are opaque to ordinary light rays. These radiations not only affect a photographic plate but also discharge an electrified body. What really happens when a sub stance emits radiations seems to be the breaking down of the material itself, a continual disintegration of the radioactive element; and the result of this breaking down is a complete change, in tho element so that what one begins experimenting with in time becomes something else. Behind all this mysterious scientific trickery, as it must ever seem to the layman, are the dreams of the old alchemists. They had visions of changing lead into gold. That is still a notion to toy with, but science Has at least got so far tliat it can produce a priceless element which will change into a cheap one. That is to say, we may begin with uranium, a most rare clement-, and note how in process of time it breaks down through continuous activity to a substance known as uranium Y, then into another known as uranium X, and so on to ionium and radium and radium A, radium B, to radium E, after which it becomes polonium. and finally lead. Only the time taken is rather too long for us to watch the change, for half the action (not all) would require at least 5000 million years. . . .so that the ‘alchemists would need to have patience. —(L.)