Radio-Active Substances

by Marie Curie

q₀ being the amount of emanation present in the radium at time t = 0.

According to Formula 3, the excess of the quantity of emanation, Q, contained by the radium in a state of equilibrium above the quantity, q, contained at a given moment, decreases as a function of the time according to an exponential law, which is also the law of the spontaneous disappearance of the emanation. The radiation of radium being proportional to the amount of emanation, the excess of the intensity of the limiting radiation above the actual intensity should decrease as a function of the time by the same law; the excess should thus diminish to one-half in about four days.

The preceding theory is incomplete, since the loss of emanation to the exterior has been neglected. It is also difficult to determine the manner in which this acts as a function of the time. In comparing the results of experiment with those of this incomplete theory, there is found to be no satisfactory agreement; the conviction is, however, retained that the theory in question is partially true. The law by which the excess of limiting activity above the actual activity diminishes to one-half in four days represents approximately the course of the renewal of activity after heating for ten days. In the case of the renewal of activity after solution, the same law appears to hold approximately for a certain period of time, which begins two or three days after evaporation to dryness and continues for ten or fifteen days. The phenomena are otherwise complex; the theory sketched out does not explain the reason of the suppression of the penetrating rays in greater proportion than the absorbable rays.

Nature and Cause of the Phenomena of Radio-activity.

From the beginning of research upon the radio-active bodies, and when the properties of these bodies were yet hardly known, the spontaneity of their radiation presented itself as a problem having the greatest interest for physicists. To-day we have advanced considerably in the understanding of radio-active bodies, and are able to isolate one of very great power, viz., radium. With the object of making use of the remarkable properties of radium, a profound investigation of the rays emitted by radio-active bodies is indispensable; the various groups of rays under investigation present points of similarity with the groups of rays existing in Crookes tubes: cathode rays, Röntgen rays, canal rays. The same groups of rays are found in the secondary radiation produced by Röntgen rays, and in the radiation of bodies which have acquired radio-activity by induction.

But if the nature of the radiation is actually better known, the cause of this spontaneous radiation remains a mystery, and the phenomena always presents itself to us as a profound and wonderful enigma.

The spontaneously radio-active bodies, and in the first place radium, are sources of energy. The evolution of energy, to which they give rise, is manifested by Becquerel radiation, by chemical and luminous effects, and by the continuous generation of heat.

The question often arises as to whether energy is created within the radio-active bodies themselves, or whether it is borrowed by them from external sources. No one of the numerous hypotheses arising from these two points of view has yet received experimental confirmation.