The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

Radio-active substances are stores of energy, some of which is constantly escaping from them; they are constantly changing without external compulsion, and are constantly radiating energy: all explosives are storehouses of energy which, or part of which, can be obtained from them; but the liberation of their energy must be started by some kind of external shock. When an explosive substance has exploded, its existence as an explosive is finished; the products of the explosion are substances from which energy cannot be obtained: when a radio-active substance has exploded, it explodes again, and again, and again; a time comes, sooner or later, when it has changed into substances that are useless as sources of energy. The disintegration of an explosive, started by an external force, is generally completed in a fraction of a second; change of condition changes the rate of explosion: the "half-life period" of each radio-active substance is a constant characteristic of it; if a gram of radium were kept for about 1800 years, half of it would have changed into radio-inactive substances. Conditions may be arranged so that an explosive remains unchanged--wet gun-cotton is not exploded by a shock which would start the explosion of dry gun-cotton--in other words, the explosion of an explosive can be regulated: the explosive changes of a radio-active substance, which are accompanied by the radiation of energy, cannot be regulated; they proceed spontaneously in a regular and definable manner which is not influenced by any external conditions--such as great change of temperature, presence or absence of other substances--so far as these conditions have been made the subject of experiment: the amount of activity of a radio-active substance has not been increased or diminished by any process to which the substance has been subjected. Explosives are manufactured articles; explosiveness is a property of certain arrangements of certain quantities of certain elements: so far as experiments have gone, it has not been found possible to add the property of radio-activity to an inactive substance, or to remove the property of radio-activity from an active substance; the cessation of the radio-activity of an active substance is accompanied by the disappearance of the substance, and the production of inactive bodies altogether unlike the original active body.