Third Hydrogen

Theoretical physics last week again proved that it has substance. The lightest element, hydrogen, has an atomic weight of 1.0078. The helium atom, next lightest in the table of elements, weighs 4.002. Are there no substances in between, with atomic weights of approximately 2 and 3?

A discrepancy between the spectrographic and chemical calculations of the weight of the hydrogen atom suggested that there must be a rare isotope of hydrogen mixed with the abundant common hydrogen found in water and sugar. Such an isotope would behave chemically like hydrogen, but weigh two, perhaps three times as much. Professor Raymond Thayer Birge of the University of California and Professor Donald Howard Menzel of Harvard calculated that one part of heavy hydrogen should appear in 4,500 parts of ordinary hydrogen.

Two years ago Professor Harold Clayton Urey of Columbia and Dr. Ferdinand Graft Brickwedde of the U. S. Bureau of Standards discovered a heavy hydrogen in liquid hydrogen distilled at 466DEG below zero Fahrenheit. Its atomic weight was 2.0136. Later Dean of Chemistry Gilbert Newton Lewis of the University of California following a method devised by the Bureau of Standards' Dr. Edward Wight Washburn, produced 99.5% pure heavy hydrogen. Water containing this heavy hydrogen kills guppy fish, tadpoles, worms. Probably it is poisonous to man.

Last week two members of Dean Lewis' staff--Professor W. M. Latimer and Dr. Herbert A. Young--found in some of the Dean's heavy hydrogen the third type which theories of physicists predicted. Its atomic weight is approximately 3.

The recent, rapid discoveries of particles in the atom have sent physicists back to their Greek dictionaries. Hydrogen No.1 (most common) is beginning to be called protium, Hydrogen No. 2 deuterium. Hydrogen No. 3 will therefore have to be tritium. Protium's nucleus is the proton, deuterium's the denton, and tritium's (probably) the triton. After them, in Nature's system of elements, comes helium (atomic weight approximately 4). The helium atom's nucleus is the alpha particle which, in the full round of substances, again appears during the disintegration of the heaviest of the 92 elements--uranium, thorium, actinium, radium.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.