SCIENCE NOTES

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 25, 3 September 1920, Page 14

SCIENCE NOTES

RADIUM. Although radium is a very ^ covery, it has airested public att ^ a greater degree tlian is usuallv ? > 10 upon a scientific subject. Dei,to\ve(| Everyone is now familiar with ti at least, wliich has obtained sucl* *1 spread recognition, that, be.sides' ^ radium dances, we are buyin, collars, radium stoves, and ladil v The remarkable activities 0f radiu J shown 011 so small a scale in tho i ^ speciments of it which alone exis"'";^ oue would hardly expect them to'ron^ f interest of many who can be easilv pressed by the mighty power of' the hines for Southland's hydro-eloctric Sche!' or the thousands of miles traversed b wireless messages from New Zealand / Australia. ' 1 The fact that the general public have been so widely interested in radium and so deeply impressed by it, is a wma'rkal), testimony to the high position held at th9 present time by science, since the publ|« have bad to rely for the most part on their faith in the teachings 0f scientific men, both for their knowledge 0f tlie things radium can do, and for their belief that its doings are surprising and deservimr of the most careful attention. Radium in the early days of onr acqum. tance with it, appeared to afford a contradiction of two of the most firmly established laws of nature — the conservalkm oi energy to bodies, nor receives it from them. Hie law of the conservation of energy means that the total amount of enercy in a material system cannot be varied, pro. vided the system neither parts with energy to bodies, or receives it from them, The persistence of matter is the experimentally obtained fact that no process at the command of ma© can either destroy or create even a single particle of matter. Energy, however, it may be changed from one form into another, is never. ia our experience destroyed, on the one hand or orginated on the other. Whenev&r we see energy displayed we can always trace it, if we have suflicient knowledge of the facts, to some previously existing form or forms of energy. The movement of a railway engine is a transformation of the heat energy oi the steam, that is, the movement oi the steam 1 molecules striking one another and driving, one another farther apart. This is the transformation of the heat energy of the gases of combustion. ihe intra-atomic energies which were transformed into a combustion-rush, were tlm selves transformations of the actinic vibl rations of the ether which acted on the leaves of the growing plants out of which the coal was formed. These actinic vibrations were safc up at a distance of many millions of miles by the vibrating particles of the sun. Radium is now one of the alieged sonrces of the enormous heat energy 0/ the sun. Although we are in douht as to whence j and how the sun maintains his enermous 1 heat energy, we are at any rate quite convinced t-hat when a theory on this subject j is generally accepted, it will prove to be one more instanoe of ihe great law, that, wherever energy appears, it has been | transformed from some previous manifestations of energy. Supposing we take it the other way round, beginning with the sun, and ending with the railway engine referred to, we readily perceive the converse that, whever energy disappears it is n0' really destroyed but only transformed into some other kind of movement in soma other substance. And here I feel tempted to say thing about the "existence of human sonality and its survival of hodily deat i, 1 but fearing that "A," "Jacques, j1" "John," may cause the Tower of fall in ruins about my feet, I mahe 115 to retuxn to my theme. , , If we examine the matter quantita ^^ weighing and measuring energies in each successive pair of man1 es ^ 1 we fmd that the force devekp^ ways exactly equal to that out 0 it was transformed. jng« If the travelling energy of !"nergy I train be added to the friction-hea of the wheels, axles, rails and 1S ' ^ . : air, to the heat energy nag - the sides of the boiler into the a and to the heat energy impar'' , steam, the gases of combustion a ^ ^ ashes, it is found that the sum to tjlfl actly equal to the heat deve opo burning fuel. . ffeek. These notes will be contmu tnJCfc. What we have said about the 1 of ability of matter and the ^ energy is merely put in P ain yhosa intended as a scientific de nl j^iuin of my readers who know a a exerCjge and radio-activity, will, . iafim1, their christian chanty and ities of their weaker brethrea