Abstract
DR. J. K. MARSH and Prof. S. Sugden describe and tabulate results obtained by bombarding rare earth elements with neutrons. Radioactivity of varying intensities, with half-life from a few minutes to two days, was produced in nine out of thirteen elements. Europium, dysprosium and holmium were found particularly active; it is suggested that these elements may be useful as neutron detectors. Prof. G. Hevesy and Miss Hilde Levi give a similar table for the radioactivity induced in eleven rare earth elements. The two tables are not in entire agreement, owing, as both groups of investigators point out, to the difficulty of obtaining the rare earths in a pure state. Neodymium and gadolinium, the activity of which is given as zero by Marsh and Sugden, are said, by Hevesy and Levi, to have a slight activity; the values for the intensity and half-life in the case of several other elements also differ in the two tables.
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Points From Foregiong Letters. Nature 136, 110 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136110c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136110c0