Abstract
ACCORDING to a Press account of a recent lecture in Vienna, Prof. Marckwald illustrated in many striking and novel ways the intense activity of the body isolated by him from the Joachimsthal pitchblende and named radio-tellurium. The ionisation of the air in the immediate vicinity of the active substance is so intense that a current sufficiently strong to ring an electric bell was enabled to pass through it, the air forming part of the circuit. If a sheet of paper is interposed to screen the air from the rays of the preparation the effect ceases immediately and the bell stops ringing. Leyden jars were discharged without sparking by the substance, and other evidences of its great discharging power shown. All these effects were produced by a few hundredths of a milligram of the substance. Even the most active preparations of radio-tellurium, it is stated, are not self-luminous.
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SODDY, F. Radio-Tellurium . Nature 69, 347 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/069347a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/069347a0