Alpha Ray Quotes (4 quotes)
[From uranium] there are present at least two distinct types of radiation one that is very readily absorbed, which will be termed for convenience the α radiation, and the other of a more penetrative character, which will be termed the β radiation.
Originating the names for these two types of radiation. In 'Uranium Radiation and the Electrical Conduction Produced by It', Philosophical Magazine (1899), 47, 116.
Some months ago we discovered that certain light elements emit positrons under the action of alpha particles. Our latest experiments have shown a very striking fact: when an aluminium foil is irradiated on a polonium preparation [alpha ray emitter], the emission of positrons does not cease immediately when the active preparation is removed: the foil remains radioactive and the emission of radiation decays exponentially as for an ordinary radio-element. We observed the same phenomenon with boron and magnesium.
[Co-author with Irène Joliot-Curie. This one-page paper reported their discovery of artificial radioactivity for which they were awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.]
[Co-author with Irène Joliot-Curie. This one-page paper reported their discovery of artificial radioactivity for which they were awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.]
Letter to the Editor, 'Artificial Production of a New Kind of Radio-Element'(10 Jan 1934) published in Nature (1934), 133, 201-2. Cited in Mauro Dardo, Nobel Laureates and Twentieth-Century Physics (2004), 187.
We bombarded aluminum with alpha rays … then after a certain period of irradiation, we removed the source of alpha rays. We now observed that the sheet of aluminum continued to emit positive electrons over a period of several minutes.
Describing the crucial experiment made in 1934 that discovered artificial radioactivity. As quoted in John Daintith and Derek Gjertsen, A Dictionary of Scientists (1999), 287.
When alpha rays are photographed, the plate is all cluttered up with traces of rays which fail to reach their objective inside the atom and usually they hide the most interesting part of the picture. In the case of neutrons, [the advantage is that they are not seen, so] the photograph gives clear evidence of the disrupted atom.
In Ferdinand Kuhn Jr., 'Chadwick calls Neutron ‘Difficult Catch’; His Find Hailed as Aid in Study of Atom, New York Times (29 Feb 1932), 8.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
