WHAT IS POLONIUM?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 377, 30 April 1910, Page 9

WHAT IS POLONIUM?

Madame Curie, who, -with her late husband, Professor Curie "discovered" radium, has, in conjunction with another scientist, found another element of much greater radio-activity than radium. It is called polonium, and is 5000 times more rare than radium, but disintegrates much more rapidly. Thus a particle of polonium obtained with enormous difficulty lost half its weight in 140 days, while it takes 1750 years for radium to lose half its weight. If the transmutations which Madame Curie hopes to trace within a year or | so are confirmed it will constitute a revolution in chemical science, but Sir William Ramsay is sceptical of the value of the discovery. He says: There is a recognised quantity of metals produced by the decomposition of radium. There is first "radium emanation," then radium A, radium B, radium C, all shortlived and difficult to examine, radium D, two radium E's, and finally radium P, or polonium. "Mine. Curie," says Professor Ramsay, "has undoubtedly got polonium, but as it is metal which dies away almost as fast as it is produced it cannot be said to have a future, commercial or scientific. Radium itself can be worked with because it is only half gone in 1750 years, but these ephemeral substances which are produced from it during this lengthy process of decomposition do not give us time to examine them before they disappear or change into something else. With radium emanation and radium D, which has a life of forty years, you have a chance, but the whole life of radiums A, B and C is only three hours, and we cannot yet do anything with them."