Abstract
IT appeared to be so definitely one of the fundamental assumptions of physics that pure mercury has a constant density under given physical conditions that when Brönsted and Hevesy announced that they had separated it into fractions of different density (see NATURE, September 30, 1920, p. 144) it appeared desirable that the separation should be confirmed by other observers. One of us finds that when mercury (purified chemically and by distillation in a vacuum) is distilled in a very high vacuum the first sixth of the original mercury condensed is of lower density than the last sixth. The difference in density found for these fractions was 44 parts in 1,000,000. This difference does not appear to be due to error in the density determinations for the mass found in different experiments, for a constant volume of the same specimen of mercury is constant to one part in a million, and with special care it is constant to a few parts in ten millions.
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LABY, T., MEPHAM, W. The Isotopes of Mercury. Nature 109, 206–207 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109206b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109206b0
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