Proceedings of the stated meeting, held Wednesday, February 15 1905

✍ Scribed by Wm.H. Wahl

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1905
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 48 KB
• Volume: 159
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(05)90191-9

✦ Synopsis

elements simply those in which the number of atoms which disintegrate per second is so large that the process is easily detected? These are far-reaching questions. The obvious way of getting an answer to them is to test ordinary matter, like silver, platinum, copper, and so on, for radio-activity. Strutt has done this with great care, and his result is that all ordinary substances appear to possess a slight radioactivity. Unless this is due to a faint trace of a radio-element, it opens a vista of thought which staggers the imagination.

A slow--inconceivably slow--process of evolution is taking place in the matter around us. Billions of times more slowly than radium, the elements are changing into something else. Matter has had a beginning and will have an end.. So much we can see, but the beginning and end may remain forever unknown to us.

CENTRAL MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL,

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY.