For these measurements a metallic plate was used covered with a layer of powdered uranium; this plate was not otherwise kept in the dark; this precaution, according to the experimenters already quoted, being of no importance. The number of measurements taken with this plate is very great, and they actually extend over a period of five years.
Some researches were conducted to discover whether other substances were capable of acting similarly to the uranium compounds. M. Schmidt was the first to publish that thorium and its compounds possess exactly the same property. A similar research, made contemporaneously, gave me the same result. I published this not knowing at the time of Schmidt’s publication.
We shall say that uranium, thorium, and their compounds emit Becquerel rays. I have called radio-active those substances which generate emissions of this nature. This name has since been adopted generally.
In their photographic and electric effects, the Becquerel rays approximate to the Röntgen rays. They also, like the latter, possess the faculty of penetrating all matter. But their capacity for penetration is very different; the rays of uranium and of thorium are arrested by some millimetres of solid matter, and cannot traverse in air a distance greater than a few centimetres; this at least is the case for the greater part of the radiation.
The researches of different physicists, and primarily of Mr. Rutherford, have shown that the Becquerel rays undergo neither regular reflection, nor refraction, nor polarisation.
The feeble penetrating power of uranium and thorium rays would point to their similarity to the secondary rays produced by the Röntgen rays, and which have been investigated by M. Sagnac, rather than to the Röntgen rays themselves.
For the rest, the Becquerel rays might be classified as cathode rays propagated in the air. It is now known that these different analogies are all legitimate.
Measurement of the Intensity of Radiation.
Fig. 1.