radio-elements

Updated: May 20, 2025

If Professor Thompson's view be correct, the amount of potential energy inherent in the atom must be enormous. But whatever the source of the energy displayed by the radio-active substances, it is pretty generally agreed that the radio-activity of the radio-elements results in the disruption of their atoms.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science, Volume 5 : Aspects Of Recent Science

And no one now believes that radio-activity can persist indefinitely without actually exhausting the substance of the atom. Thus J. Perrin*9* has suggested that atoms may consist of parts not unlike a miniature planetary system, and in the atoms of the radio-elements the parts more distant from the centre are continually escaping from the central attraction, thus giving rise to the radiations.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science, Volume 5 : Aspects Of Recent Science