Chemistry in 1909.

Progress, Volume V, Issue 6, 1 April 1910, Page 201

Chemistry in 1909.

As might be expected, the radio-active elements still continue to engage the attention of chemists. Although during the year 1909 no very dramatic discovery was made. Ramsay, Soddy, and Debierne made important announcements. Sir William Ramsay sealed up some radium bromide in a bottle together with water, and observed the regular evolution of the gas (hydrogen and oxygen) at the rate of 30 cubic centimeters per week After nine months this evolution ceased almost entirely, from which Sir William Ramsay concluded that either the radium salt had lost its capacity for decomposing the water, or that the velocity of the reverse action (the re-com-bination of owgen and hydrogen to water) predominated over that of decomposition. These results are questioned by Debierne. who decomposed water by the direct action of 1-mvs, keep ; ng the radium salt and the water in separate glass vessels. Whichever chemist ultimately proves to be right, the investigation is interesting, because it is the first attempt to apply practically the enormous store of energy winch is contained in radium and which may be gauged when it is stated that, during disintegration, radium emits two and one-half million times as much heat as an equal volume of hydrogen and oxygen combining explosively to form water The work of Soddy for 1909 has shown without question that helium is produced from uranium as well as from radium, the amount being two milligrammes of helium annually from over a million kilogrammes of uranium.