MODELS OF POSITIVE ION 317 



not radiated away, and accumulates in the atom 

 when the energy of vibration becomes so great 

 that the atom shoots off an electron, and thus 

 converting its energy of translation to the mole- 

 cules with which it collides, so that the original 

 energy of translation of the molecules, which was 

 converted into more and more rapid vibrations in 

 the atom, is again returned into translational 

 energy, minus, of course, the small amount of 

 energy which was radiated by the atoms in the 

 conversion of the vibrations into shriller and 

 shriller ones. 



We have an illustration of the very rapid vibra- 

 tions in the radiations from uranium, which are 

 non-deflectable by a magnet and not absorbed, 

 also the highly penetrating and likewise non- 

 deflectable rays from thorium. They resemble the 

 "soft" and "hard" Rontgen rays, except in so 

 far that they probably are trains of rapid oscilla- 

 tion, whereas the latter are admitted to be thin 

 pulses in the aether. The corpuscles which also 

 accompany these are a necessary consequence of 

 the process. 



As we have said that the action of violet or 

 ultra-violet light is to produce in some cases a 

 permanent and in others a temporary chemical 

 change, by giving rise to molecular agglomera- 

 tions ; so that the phenomenon of fluorescence or 

 phosphorescence is of secondary nature, resultiag 

 from the approach towards those molecules of the 

 negative corpuscles, by which means the stored-up 



