The coloring of the diamond by radium radiation

✍ Scribed by S.C. Lind; D.C. Bardwell

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1923
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 440 KB
• Volume: 196
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(23)90508-9

✦ Synopsis

THE results of various investigators attempting to color the diamond by radium radiation have not been entirely uniform and in the main were unsuccessful. Doelter 1 classes diamond as the most difficult of all minerals to color, and reports for the most part failures or very slight coloring. On the other hand, Crookes " obtained in a few cases bluish-green and sage-green colors and A. Miethe ~ produced a yellow color from a colorless diamond in one instance.

As reported in the preceding paper, 4 all minerals except diamond, that can be colored by radium radiation, are colored by the penetrating (beta and gamma) rays transmitted through the glass tube containing the radium salt. Experiments of this character, using 25o rags. Ra for thirty days on five Cape diamonds of four to ten carats of bright straw-yellow color, failed in all cases to produce any change in color. Two other cut diamonds of the same color were sealed inside a tube with Io per cent. RaCI~ for the same length of time. The one which was entirely covered by the IO per cent. salt became fairly green (about a half grass-green) in thirty days, while the other, lying on the surface of the salt, took on a distinct but fainter green.

It was therefore quite evident that direct (probably alpha) radiation is necessary to color the diamond. This experiment explains why most investigators, working with penetrating radiation only, have failed to produce color changes. ~ To confirm this, *Communicated by .