Nuclear Transformation Quotes

The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.

Thus the radio elements formed strange and cruel families in which each member was created by spontaneous transformation of the mother substance: radium was a "descendant" of uranium, polonium a descendant of radium.

In this case, the particle formed has correspondingly less energy, whereas the product nucleus passes into the ground state with emission of the quantity of energy saved as gamma radiation.

There is no doubt that radium is transformed spontaneously into an active gas, radon, emitting at the same time alpha particles, or helions.

The time necessary for the disappearance of half the atoms, called the half-life, is a fundamental characteristic of each radio-element; according to the substance, the value of the half-life varies between a fraction of a second and millions of years.

We have shown that it is possible to create a radioactivity characterized by the emission of positive or negative electrons in boron and magnesium by bombardment with alpha rays.

Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. ... The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.

To demonstrate this simultaneity is by no means trivial, because it may for example happen that the product nucleus always forms in an activated state at first.