Record

MS - Manuscripts General
- 603 - Correspondence of Sir Joseph Larmor, theoretical physicist and Physical Secretary of the Royal Society
  - 10 - Letters to Joseph Larmor, correspondents S-T

RefNo	MS/603/10/62
Previous numbers	1834
Level	Item
Title	Letter from Frederick Soddy, the University, Glasgow, to [Joseph] Larmor
Creator	Soddy; Frederick (1877-1956); British chemist and social commentator
Recipient	Larmor; Sir Joseph (1857-1942); Irish theoretical physicist
Date	29 April 1907
Description	He is grateful for the information on sealed communications to the Royal Society. He has been pushing his reults on gases a little further with [Thomas D.] Mackenzie, a Carnegie scholar. Soddy describes filling six spectrum tubes with helium at various pressures, the resulting expeiments in which they became nonconducting, and the resulting pressure after opening up under mercury: '...the helium immediately started coming out if the film of volatilised aluminium from the electrodes as it was attacked by the mercury & nearly all the He that had disappeared was recovered in this way'. He describes additional pressure experiments with a McLeod gauge, and at all pressures the tube is brilliantly fluorescent under the discharge. It presents the appearence of being exhausted to a high degree of vacuum. He will examine the compound of helium and aluminium further, and concludes by admitting that Larmor's views on the relative, rather than the absolute inertness of these gases may be more correct than Soddy's original position.
Extent	4p.
Format	Manuscript
PhysicalDescription	Ink on paper
AccessStatus	Open

Fellows associated with this archive

Code	PersonName	Dates
NA8018	Soddy; Frederick (1877 - 1956)	1877 - 1956

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