Creative chemistry : descriptive of recent achievements in the chemical industries / by Edwin E. Slosson.

  • Slosson, Edwin E. (Edwin Emery), 1865-1929
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Creative chemistry : descriptive of recent achievements in the chemical industries / by Edwin E. Slosson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    spontaneously and continuously, it decomposes and we know no way of hastening or of checking it. Whether it is cooled in liquefied air or heated to its melting point the change goes on just the same. An ounce of radium salt will give out enough heat in one hour to melt an ounce of ice and in the next hour will raise this water to the boiling point, and so on again and again without cessation for years, a fire without fuel, a real¬ ization of the philosopher’s lamp that the alchemists sought in vain. The total energy so emitted is mil¬ lions of times greater than that produced by any chemi¬ cal combination such as the union of oxygen and hy¬ drogen to form water. From the heavy white salt there is continually rising a faint fire-mist like the will-o ’-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as the emanation or niton, “the shining one.’’ A pound of niton would give off energy at the rate of 23,000 horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would think, but we must remember that it does not last. By the sixth day the power would have fallen off by half. Besides, no one would dare to serve as engineer, for the radiation will rot away the flesh of a living man who comes near it, causing gnawing ulcers or curing them* It will not only break down the complex and delicate molecules of organic matter but will attack the atom it¬ self, changing, it is believed, one element into another, again the fulfilment of a dream of the alchemists. And its rays, unseen and unfelt by us, are yet strong enough to penetrate an armorplate and photograph what is behind it. But radium is not the most mysterious of the ele¬ ments but the least so. It is giving out the secret that