Sir W. Ramsay and Professor
Soddy attained a like result by endeavouring to estimate the mass of
the emanation by the quantity of helium produced.
[Footnote 41: See _Radioactive Transformations_ (p. 251). Professor
Rutherford says that "each of the alpha ray products present in one
gram of radium product (_sic_) expels 6.2 x 10^{10} alpha particles
per second." He also remarks on "the experimental difficulty of
accurately determining the number of alpha particles expelled from
radium per second."--ED.]
[Footnote 42: See Rutherford, op. cit. p. 150.--ED.]
If radium transforms itself in such a way that its activity does not
persist throughout the ages, it loses little by little the provision
of energy it had in the beginning, and its properties furnish no valid
argument to oppose to the principle of the conservation of energy. To
put everything right, we have only to recognise that radium possessed
in the potential state at its formation a finite quantity of energy
which is consumed little by little. In the same manner, a chemical
system composed, for instance, of zinc and sulphuric acid, also
contains in the potential state energy which, if we retard the
reaction by any suitable arrangement--such as by amalgamating the zinc
and by constituting with its elements a battery which we cause to act
on a resistance--may be made to exhaust itself as slowly as one may
desire.
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