A Brief Account of Radio-activity

by F. P. Venable

1. That there is a constant production of fresh radio-active matter by the radio-active body.

2. That the activity of the matter so formed decreases according to an exponential law with the time from the moment of its formation.

These hypotheses agree with the experimental results. The decrease and rise of activity, for example, of uranium and uranium X, and also of thorium and thorium X, have been measured, plotted, and the equations worked out.

Manifestly, a state of equilibrium will be reached when the rate of loss of activity of the matter already produced is balanced by the activity of the new matter produced. This equilibrium and the knowledge of the rate of decrease in general will have little value if this rate, like chemical changes, is subject to the influence of chemical and physical conditions. The rate of decrease has been found to be unaltered by any known chemical or physical agency. For instance, neither the highest temperatures applicable nor the cold of liquid air have any appreciable effect.

Equilibrium Series

In order to measure the disintegration of a radio-active body in units of time so that the rate may be comparable with that of other radio-active bodies, the relation between the amounts under consideration must be a definite one. For this purpose equal weights of the bodies are not taken, but use is made of the amounts which are in equilibrium with a fixed amount of the parent substance.

One gram of radium has been settled upon as the standard for that series and a unit known as the "curie" has been adopted to express the equilibrium quantity of radium emanation. Thus, a curie of radium emanation (or niton) is the weight (or, as this is a gas, the volume at standard pressure and temperature) of the emanation in equilibrium with one gram of radium. This, by calculation and experiment, is found to be 0.63 cubic millimeter. When this amount has been produced by one gram of radium, the formation and decay will exactly balance one another. This is, therefore, one curie of emanation.

The measurement of the rate of decay is difficult but can be carried out with great accuracy, even down to seconds, in the case of certain short-lived bodies. Errors crept in at first from the failure to completely separate the substances produced in the series, and sometimes because of the simultaneous production of two substances.

As stated, the decay follows an exponential law. The time required for the decay of activity to half-value does not mean, therefore, that there will be total decay in twice that time. Thus the half-value period for uranium X is about 22 days. The period for complete decay is about 160 days. This half-value period corresponds to the half-value recovery period of uranium, which is also 22 days.

These were the earlier figures obtained for uranium X and they illustrate some of the difficulties surrounding such determinations. It was found later that the body examined as uranium X was really a constant mixture and of course the decay and recovery periods were also composite. It required later and very skilful work to separate them into the bodies indicated in the disintegration series.