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VIII.—The Atomic Weight of the Calcium contained in very Old Potassium-rich Minerals occurring at Portsoy, Banffshire, and at Cape Wrath, Sutherlandshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

William W. Smith  and
Thomas Tait
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Extract

The radioactivity of potassium was discovered by Campbell and Wood (1907). Since the β-ray activity shown by all the potassium salts investigated was very small, the suspicion naturally arose that this activity was due to a trace of radioactive impurity and not to the potassium itself. All tests for the presence of an emanation gave, however, negative results, and it became necessary to conclude that the observed emission of the β-radiation was indeed a property of the potassium atom. The subsequent investigations of Campbell (1907) and of Hoffman (1924), whose attempts to alter the activity by chemical operations were unsuccessful, supported this conclusion, as did also the work of Biltz and Marcus, who prepared specimens of potassium sulphate from potassium minerals of different geological ages and found that the activity of the preparations per atom of potassium was always the same.

Type
Proceedings
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 54 , 1935 , pp. 88 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1935

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References

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