476 



NATURE 



[June i6, 1910 



of Liverpool and their successors his collection of old 

 alchemical and similar books, to be kept together as the 

 nucleus of a collection for the professors' private room. 

 He left a sum suflicient to produce an annual income of 

 50Z. to Liverpool University to found an advanced chemical 

 scholarship to be called '* The Campbell Brown Scholar- 

 ship," and a sum sufficient to produce an annual income 

 of 800Z. to the University of Liverpool upon trust for the 

 endowment of a chair of chemistry in addition to existing 

 chairs, to be called the Campbell Brown chair, or if a 

 chair shall have been endowed, then either for a chair 

 for the teaching of agricultural chemistry or a chair of 

 some other branch of industrial chemistry. He also left 

 5000/. to the University upon trust to place the income 

 at the disposal of the Campbell Brown professor for the 

 time being towards the cost of his apparatus and material. 

 If the University of Liverpool shall not accept the bequest 

 for the endowment of the chair on these conditions, the 

 whole sums are to be given to the University of Man- 

 chester to endow a Campbell Brown chair of music. The 

 residue of his property he left upon trust to found a series 

 of entrance scholarships each of the value of 6oJ. per 

 annum, to be held at the University of Liverpool, tenable 

 for three years and renewable for a fourth. The value of 

 the bequest for the proposed professorship is from 25,000^. 

 to 28,000/., of that for the advanced chemical scholarship 

 X500Z., and for the entrance scholarships 5000/. to 8000Z. 



At one of the meetings of the Women's Congress held 

 at the Japan-British Exhibition on June 8, the question 

 of a university standard in home science was discussed. 

 Mrs. St. Loe Strachey read a paper on the ideals of home 

 science, and defined a university standard as meaning the 

 attainment by a student of such a standard of knowledge 

 as could be rewarded by the grant of a degree if it had 

 been attained in a subject in which our universities examine 

 for a degree. In the special courses in home science 

 being held at King's College for Women, the teaching 

 claims to attain to a university standard. The students 

 are not allowed to be content with merely acquiring a 

 knowledge of the technical processes carried on in the 

 practice of domestic science, but are required to study at 

 first hand the various scientific principles which underlie 

 the proper conduct of a house or institution and the bring- 

 mg up of the young. It is true, she said, that women in 

 our universities have for many years past studied physics, 

 chemistry, biology, bacteriology, and, indeed, the whole 

 list of sciences mentioned in the King's College syllabus, 

 but the point is that these subjects should be studied in a 

 definite, coordinated course, having for its object *' to 

 provide a scientific education in the principles which under- 

 lie the whole organisation of home life." Miss Oakeley, 

 warden of King's College Women's Department, said the 

 new movement met the spirit of the age in its insistence 

 that science should be everywhere, that reason should 

 occupy all spheres, that there should be no dark corners 

 left. The meeting seemed hardly to realise that to be 

 thoroughly effective in improving the conditions of home- 

 life the science teaching received by women must be begun 

 in the school, and that many women will have few oppor- 

 tunities for further study after school days are over. The 

 conditions in the schools must be improved. First, a 

 course of practical work in science suitable for girls, and 

 having the needs of the home before it at every stage, 

 must be forthcoming; and, secondly, there must be a 

 supply of well-educated mistresses who, in addition to their 

 laboratory practice and general knowledge of science, have 

 gained a first-hand acquaintance with household needs and 

 difficulties, and have become experts in such arts as are 

 required in the kitchen and laundry. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 

 Royal Society, June 9.— Sir Archibald Geikie. K.C.B., 

 president, in the chair.— J. A. Gray: The distribution of 

 velocity in the jS rays from a radio-active substance. The 

 ^ fays from some radio-active substances have been 

 deflected in a magnetic field, and the detection of sets of 

 homogeneous P rays attempted by the photographic method. 

 Radium emanation was the substance first used. It was 

 Placed in a very narrow thin-walled tube, drawn out from 

 NO. 2120, VOL. 83] 



capillary tubing, so thin that the a rays from the emana- 

 tion escaped. Enough black paper was placed over the 

 tube to absorb the a rays and to protect the photographic 

 film from phosphorescence caused by the a rays. The 

 ^ rays from the active deposit had thus to pass through 

 very little absorbing material. If the )8 rays from a 

 simple radio-active substance are emitted at an identical 

 speed, we should therefore expect to find evidence of such, 

 even if /S rays do change slightly in velocity in passing 

 through matter. Although several photographs were taken, 

 no sign was found of sets of homogeneous /3 rays from 

 RaB and RaC. Experiments were then tried with RaE 

 as radiating substance. Here we have j8 rays which are 

 very nearly absorbed according to an exponential law, and 

 if, as many writers have assumed, absorption according 

 to an exponential law signifies homogeneous P rays, these 

 rays should be practically homogeneous. It was found, 

 however, that the velocities of the rays were distributed 

 over a wide range. The results of the experiments may 

 be summarised as follows : — (1) /3 rays which are absorbed 

 according to an exponential law are not homogeneous ; 

 (2) fi rays must fall in velocity in passing through matter, 

 for, if not, the absorption coefficient of any mixture of 

 rays must decrease as the rays pass through matter. — 

 W. Wilson : The decrease of velocity of the /3 particles on 

 passing through matter. In a previous paper it was shown ! 

 that the velocity of i3 particles suffers an appreciable ! 

 decrease on passing through matter. The present experi- j 

 ments were undertaken with the view of directly confirming j 

 this result. Homogeneous beams of rays were separated j 

 by means of a magnetic field from a heterogeneous beam 

 given out by the active deposit from radium. These homo- 

 geneous rays passed into another magnetic field, where their 

 velocity was measured. Sheets of aluminium were then 

 placed in the path of the rays between the two fields, and 

 the velocity of the emergent rays was found to have 

 decreased by an appreciable amount. From considerations 

 of the law of absorption found to hold for homogeneous 

 rays, the decrease of velocity of the rays as they pass 

 through matter could be calculated, and was found to 

 agree with the results obtained experimentally. The results 

 obtained are in agreement with the equations E = k{a — x) 

 and E^ = k'{a' — x), where E is the energy of the rays, 

 X the thickness of matter traversed, and fe and a constants. 

 The agreement is rather better in the former case than in 

 the latter, but the range of velocities considered was not 

 sufficient to differentiate sharply between them. Although 

 the change in velocity observed was only from 2-85x10** 

 to 2-25x10" cm. per sec, yet the change of the properties 

 of the rays with respect to absorption is very large, the 

 absorption coefficient of the former being 4-9 cm.-\ while 

 that of the latter is 35-2 cm.-'. — ^J, N. Brown: The rate 

 of emission of o particles from uranium and its products. 

 The object of the experiments was to- estimate the numbet 

 of a particles emitted per second per gram of uranium in 

 equilibrium with all its products (i.e. as it occurs in pitch* 

 blende). The pitchblende was prepared as a thin film, 

 over which was placed a zinc sulphide screen. The 

 scintillations produced on the screen by the o particles were 

 observed through a microscope. Each scintillation corre- 

 sponded to the emission of one a particle from the pitch- 

 blende. The weight of pitchblende sending particles to thf 

 portion of screen viewed by the microscope was readily 

 obtained, and since the screen was very close to the filffl 

 the number observed could be taken as half the total 

 quantity emitted by this weight of pitchblende so long 

 the thickness of the film was less than the distance 

 penetra'tion of o rays into pitchblende. This point w^ 

 ensured by making observations on films of various thicl 

 nesses and plotting a curve between number of scintillj 

 tions per minute and weight of film, the result beir| 

 calculated from a film for which the curve showed the rat 

 of production of scintillations to be proportional to tl 

 thickness. The percentage of uranium in the pitchblend 

 was estimated, and the result finally expressed as numb 

 of o particles per second per gram of uranium i 

 equilibrium with its products, the figure obtained beinj 

 7-36x10*. From Rutherford's result for radium the valu* 

 for uranium can be obtained through a series of calcula^ 

 ■tions, each of which may involve a 5 per cent, error. Thtl 

 value obtained in this way is 9-1x10''. — Hon. R. M 

 Strutt : The accumulation of helium in geological time, ivij 



M 



