Ludwig wrote:
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.. . .
Tom's question about the "influence machine", posted yesterday, prompted me
to go to the library and to look for a better answer than an improvised guess.
In the "Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford" I see how "a long insulated wire,
15 m long, suspended outside the laboratory window" was "charged by means of
a Wimshurst machine driven by a motor". The wire potential was -26,000 volts
and it was normally exposed for about 30 min. The radioactivity collected was
shown to decay (to background level) in three hours. The paper was published
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in 1902; Rutherford was at McGill University at that time. . . .
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: Gedanken-ing is not enough; physics is an experimental science! :
: Inspired by thinking about phys-L messages on capacitors :
: Ludwik Kowalski :
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kowalskiL@alpha.montclair.edu http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski
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It is curious that the time of decay "to background level" is reported,
rather than a half life. Were the statistics of radioactive decay not yet
understood - when (and by whom) was this subject first understood?
Anyone know?