ARTIFICIAL RADIUM

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19759, 28 March 1934, Page 12

ARTIFICIAL RADIUM

FIND BY MME. CURIE’S DAUGHTER. The transformation of certain metals into other substances which are in consequence radio-active has been achieved in the laboratories of Madame Curie who, with her late husband, originally discovered radium. Experiments have been carried out by Madame Curie’s daughter, Madame Joliot, and her husband. “What my wife and I have done," M. Joliot explained to a representative of the “News-Chronicle,” “is to create a radio-active substance artificially. “By bombarding 'boron,’ for instance, which is a light substance with no radio activity, with Alpha rays from polonium we have produced radioactive azote. “By treating aluminium and magnesium in the same way we have obtained radio active phosphorus and radio-active silicum. “The radio activity only lasts a short time,” added M. Joliot. “In the case of radio-azote it is transformed within 15 minutes into carbon. All the new substances are of no practical value. “We are going to continue our researches in the line of making light substances radio-active. “Cambridge, New York, and other scientific centres are very much inter-

ested in our discovery, which has been made in the last three months, and scientists there are going to make experiments of their own as they are better equipped than we are to produce more powerful Alpha rays. “The apparatus we used for our experiments cost £2500.”