Abstract
OF the seventeen papers before us, from the Radium Institute at Vienna, five by Drs. von Hevesy and Paneth, both of whom are well known in this country, contain notable advances in our knowledge of the chemistry of the radio-active, elements. The chemical identity of the several members of a group of isotopic elements has been further put to the proof and extended to include the electro-chemical properties. An elegant application of this new phenomenon of isotopy has been made in analytical chemistry in the determination of the solubility of such excessively insoluble compounds as lead chromate, sulphide, &c. The principle of the method is to add to the common element its radio-isotope in unweighable, but intensely radio-active, amount, and to estimate the distribution of. the former after any chemical operation from the experimental distribution of the latter by radio-active measurements. Thus radium to derived from the decay of radium emanation, is added to lead before its precipitation by potassium chromate. Radium D being isotopic with fead, the ratio of the lead and radium D must remain unchanged by the precipitation. The quantity of lead in the filtrate is, of course, analytically undetectable, but the quantity of radium D is easily estimated. In this way the solubility of lead chromate in water at 25° was found to. be 0.012 mg. per litre, or twelve parts in a thousand million.
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S., F. Work of the Vienna Radium Institute 1 . Nature 92, 699 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/092699a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/092699a0