A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF
RADIO-ACTIVITY
BY
FRANCIS P. VENABLE, Ph.D., D.Sc., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
AUTHOR OF
"A SHORT HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY,"
"PERIODIC LAW," ETC.
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
Copyright, 1917,
By D. C. Heath & Co.
IA7
PREFACE
I have gathered the material for this little book because I have found it a necessary filling out of the course for my class in general chemistry. Such a course dealing with the composition and structure of matter is left unfinished and in the air, as it were, unless the marvellous facts and deductions from the study of radio-activity are presented and discussed. The usual page or two given in the present text-books are too condensed in their treatment to afford any intelligent grasp of the subject, so I have put in book form the lectures which I have hitherto felt forced to give.
Perhaps the book may prove useful also to busy men in other branches of science who wish to know something of radio-activity and have scant leisure in which to read the larger treatises.