These phenomena of induced radio-activity appear to be of a different kind from the ordinary ones, and show a much slower process of evolution.
A considerable time is also necessary both for the production and dissipation of this form of induced radio-activity.
Radio-activity Induced upon Substances in Solution with Radium.
When a radio-active ore containing radium is treated, with the object of extracting the radium, chemical separations are effected, after which the radio-activity is confined entirely to one of the products. In this way active products, which may be several hundred times as active as uranium, are separated from totally inactive products, such as copper, antimony, arsenic, &c. Certain other bodies (iron, lead) were never separated in an entirely inactive state. As these active bodies are concentrated, the case is no longer the same; each chemical separation no longer furnishes absolutely inactive products; all the resulting products of a separation are active in varying degrees.
After the discovery of induced radio-activity, M. Giesel was the first to attempt to excite activity in ordinary inactive bismuth by keeping it in solution with very active radium. He thus obtained radio-active bismuth, and from this he concluded that the polonium extracted from pitchblende was probably bismuth made active by the vicinity of the radium contained in the pitchblende.
I have also prepared active bismuth by keeping bismuth in solution with a very active radium salt.
The difficulties of this experiment consist in the extreme precautions which must be taken to remove all traces of radium from the solution. If we realise what an infinitesimal quantity of radium suffices to produce very considerable radio-activity in 1 grm. of material, it is difficult to believe in the possibility of sufficiently washing and purifying the active product. Each purification causes a diminution of activity of the product, whether this be due to removal of traces of radium or that the induced radio-activity is, under these circumstances, not proof against chemical reactions.
The results I obtained appear, however, to establish with certainty the fact that the activity is produced and persists after the radium is removed. On fractionating the nitrate of my active bismuth by precipitation with water from the nitric acid solution, I found that after careful purifying it fractionated like polonium, the most active portion being precipitated first.
If the purification is not complete the opposite occurs, showing that traces of radium still remain. I thus obtained active bismuth which from the manner of fractionation showed great purity and which was 2000 times as active as uranium. This bismuth diminishes in activity with lapse of time. But another portion of the same product, prepared with the same precautions, and fractionating in the same manner, preserves its activity without diminution for actually a period of about three years.
This activity is 150 times as great as that of uranium.