The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brief Account of Radio-activity, by
Francis Preston Venable

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Title: A Brief Account of Radio-activity

Author: Francis Preston Venable

Release Date: May 9, 2010 [EBook #32307]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF
RADIO-ACTIVITY

BY
FRANCIS P. VENABLE, PH.D., D.SC., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
AUTHOR OF
"A SHORT HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY,"
"PERIODIC LAW," ETC.

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY D. C. HEATH & CO.

IA7

PREFACE

I have gathered the material for this little book because I have found
it a necessary filling out of the course for my class in general
chemistry. Such a course dealing with the composition and structure of
matter is left unfinished and in the air, as it were, unless the
marvellous facts and deductions from the study of radio-activity are
presented and discussed. The usual page or two given in the present
text-books are too condensed in their treatment to afford any
intelligent grasp of the subject, so I have put in book form the
lectures which I have hitherto felt forced to give.

Perhaps the book may prove useful also to busy men in other branches
of science who wish to know something of radio-activity and have scant
leisure in which to read the larger treatises.

It is needless to say that there is nothing original in the book
unless it be in part the grouping of facts and order of their
treatment. I have made free use of the writings of Rutherford, Soddy,
and J. J. Thomson, and wo