produced in air at ordinary pressure and temperature, by Röntgen rays or by the radiations from active substances. Townsend found that the value of K in dry air was ·028 for the positive ions and ·043 for the negative ions. The radium emanation thus diffuses more rapidly than the ions produced by its radiation in the gas, and behaves as if its mass were smaller than that of the ions produced in air, but considerably greater than that of the air molecules with which it is mixed.
It is not possible to regard the emanation as a temporarily modified condition of the gas originally in contact with the active body. Under such conditions a much larger value of K would be expected. The evidence derived from the experiments on diffusion strongly supports the view that the emanation is a gas of heavy molecular weight.
Makower[1] has recently attacked the question of the molecular weight of the radium emanation by another method. The rate of diffusion of the emanation through a porous plug of plaster-of-Paris was compared with that of the gases oxygen, carbon dioxide, and sulphur dioxide. It was found that Graham's law, viz. that the coefficient of diffusion K is inversely proportional to the square root of its molecular weight M, was not strictly applicable. The value of K [sqrt]M was not found to be constant for these gases, but decreased with increase of molecular weight of the gas. If, however, a curve was plotted with K [sqrt]M as ordinate and K as abscissa, the points corresponding to the values of O, CO_{2} and SO_{2} were found to lie on a straight line. By linear extrapolation, the molecular weight of the emanation was estimated. The value obtained from experiments on three different porous plugs was 85·5, 97, and 99 respectively. This method indicates that the molecular weight of the radium emanation is about 100; but in all the experiments on diffusion, it must be remembered that the emanation, whose rate of interdiffusion is being examined, exists in minute quantity mixed with the gas, and is compared with the rate of interdiffusion of gases which are present in large quantity. For this reason, deductions of the molecular weight of the emanation may be subject to comparatively large errors, for which it is difficult to make correction.
- ↑ Makower, Phil. Mag. Jan. 1905.
