NITROGEN A COMPOUND.

Northern Advocate, 18 August 1919, Page 4

NITROGEN A COMPOUND.

"A VERY BIG THING."

SIR ERNEST RUTHERFORD'S GREAT DISCOVERY.

The London correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian" had a chat recently with "a high scientific authority" about Sir Ernest Rutherford's latest discovery relative to nitrogen. He said that it was extremely interesting and extremley but it was not a complete surprise nowadays that an acknowledged element, or atom, should be proved after all to be no element and to be divisible. It was the kind of thing that chemists and physicists were looking forward to. But though it was not a complete surprise, like the discovery of the Rontgen rays, the greatness of the discovery must not be minimised. . , . The measure of the importance of the discovery is that it is only the second time that an acknowledged element has been proved to be no element. Sir William Ramsay proved that the element radium was, in fact, two elements— helium and a thing not understood, called radium emanation. That was , the first demonstration of the kind. Now Sir Ernest Rutherford has dissolved the element nitrogen into two other known elements, helium and hydrogen. It is not a revolution in chemistry and physics, but it is a very big thing.

CONCENTRATED ENERGY,

At the Royal Institution, Sir Ernest Rutherford gave a lecture on "Atomic Projectiles and' Their Collisions with Light Atoms." In the course of his lecture, Sir Ernest said \h c discovery of radio-activity had not only thrown a flood of light on the transformation, of radio-active atoms, but had provided us with the most powerful natural agencies for probing the inner structure of the I atoms of all the elements. The swift alpha particles and high-speed electrons ejected from radio-active bodies were by far the most concentrated sources of energy known to science. In consequence of its great energy of motion the charged particle was able to penetrate deeply into the structure of all atoms before it was deflected or turned backhand from the study of the deflection of the path of the particle they were able to obtain important evidence on ' the strength an d distribution of the electric fields near the centre or nu-

cleus of the atom. He thought he had obtained some evidence of the disruption of atoms by the impact of the swift alpha-particles shot out by radium C.,

FURHER DETAILS,

When one of*these alpha-particles hits the nucleus, of a ; light atom like that of hydrogen in a head-on collision, the atom is pushed on a certain distance more or less in the line of motion of the particle. A heavier atom, like that of nitrogen, is not pushed so far; yet nitrogen is riot pushed so far; yet when the experiment is tried on natrogen a few atoms are found that go as far as hydrogen atoms, and, in fact, appear to be hydrogen atoms. The possibility that the hydroger comes from external sources seems to be disproved by the precautions, taken, and in that case it must come from the nitrogen. The lecturer was therefore led to the speculation that the nucleus of the nitrogen atom is made-up of three atoms of helium and two of hydrogen, and that the hydrogen which made its appearance in his cx r periments was sent off the nucleus of the nitrpgen atom by the impact of the alpha-particle.