precipitation is more advanced, every substance separated from the active solution shows activity.
One of the earliest observations in this direction was made by Debierne, who found that barium could be made active by solution with actinium. The active barium removed from the actinium still preserved its activity after chemical treatment, and, in this way, barium chloride was obtained whose activity was 6000 times that of uranium. Although the activity of the barium chloride could be concentrated in the same way as the activity of radiferous barium chloride, it did not show any of the spectroscopic lines of radium, and could not have been due to the admixture of that element with the barium. The activity of the barium was not permanent, and Debierne states that the activity fell to about one-third of its value in three months. It seems probable that the precipitated barium carried down with it the product actinium X, and also some of the actinium itself, and that the decay observed was due to the transformation of actinium X. It is interesting to note that barium is capable of removing a large number of products of the different radio-elements. This effect is probably connected with its position in the electro-chemical series, for barium is highly electro-positive.
Giesel showed in 1900 that bismuth could be made active by placing it in a radium solution, and considered that polonium was in reality bismuth made active by the process of induction. In later experiments, he found that the bismuth plate gave out only α rays, and that the activity of the bismuth could not be ascribed to radium, since no β rays were present. We have seen that this activity of the bismuth is due to the product radium F deposited on its surface.
Mme Curie also found that bismuth was made active by solution with a radium compound, and succeeded in fractionating the above bismuth in the same way as polonium. In this way bismuth was obtained 2000 times as active as uranium, but the activity, like that of polonium separated from pitchblende, decreased with the time. In the light of the experiments on the transformation products of radium, it is seen that these early experiments of Mme Curie add additional confirmation to the view that the product (radium F) separated from radium itself is identical with the polonium obtained directly from pitchblende.
