﻿THE Jp 3 



LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[SIXTH SERIES.] 



OCTOBER 1906. 



XXXYI. On the Recombination of Ions made In/ a, ft, y, 

 and X Rays. B>j R. D. Kleeman, B.Sc, 1851 Exhibition 

 Scholar of the Adelaide University * . 



IN a paper read before the Royal Society o£ South 

 . Australia f it was shown by Professor Bragg and the 

 writer that the current through a gas ionized by a rays was 

 still unsaturated when calculation showed that the number of 

 ions lost by general recombination was small. 



This effect was ascribed to some of the ions being only 

 partially separated from their parent molecules by the action 

 of the a, particles. In the absence of an external electric 

 field these ions fall back on to^heir parent molecules. A 

 strong electric field is supposed to be able to complete the 

 separation of the ions, and thus under a strong electric field 

 the number of ions is materially increased. 



The electric field has no influence on the rate of general 

 recombination of the ions after the separation of ion from 

 parent molecule, for Langevin has shown that the rate of 

 recombination of ions uniformly distributed is not affected 

 by an external electric field. 



The recombination of an electron with its parent molecule 

 was, in the aboye-mentioned paper, termed initial as dis- 

 tinguished from general recombination. 



The writer undertook some experiments at the Cayendish 

 Laboratory to see whether initial recombination depended m 



* Communicated by Professor J. J. Thomson. F.R.S. 



t Trans. Roy. Soc.'of S. A., October 1905; Phil. Mag. April 1906. 



Phil. Mag. S. b. Yol. 12. Xo. 70. Oct. 1906. T 



