RADIO ACTIVITY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 57, 9 March 1914, Page 4

RADIO ACTIVITY.

Students of physics may anticipate aj stimulation of interest, says an Auckland correspondent, in the complicated study of radio activity as the result ot the arrival of Professor G. Owen, the newly appointed professor of physics at the Auckland Enivereity ColI lege. Professor Owen, who like his I two newly appointed colleagues, is quite a young man, has found the, study of radio-activity. th|> electron theory, and the constitution of matter to he the most interesting part of his work. On being informed'of the recent movement to establish a radium hospital m Xow Zealand, Professor Owen remarked that the enormous cost of radium, as was felt to he the ease here, was a serious matter when such projects were being considered. Radium cost about £lO per milligramme, /not because that was its intrinsic.value, hut because of the limited production and the enormous demand. Actually the pitchblende from which it was extracted had a very low value, and while the processes of extraction were very long and costly the real cost' of the metal ultimately obtained was far below its market'price. For medi-j I cal purposes largo quantities of radioactive substances were required to oh-l tain useful results, while for the purpose of laboratory work quite small I amounts were sufficient. The appliances used for detecting and measuring the effects of radio-activity were so exquisitely sensitive that physicists could work with particles which would he useless in a hospital. He had obtained with the aid of Sir E. Rutherford 213 milligrammes of radium bromide, and 13 milligrammes of mesothorinm, which was equivalent in radioactivity to 238 milligrammes of radium bromide, arid with these specimens, which he expected daily, he hoped to be able to make some interesting and useful experiments. The suecimens were worth between £oo and £GO.