DOC.
633
OCTOBER
1918 667
schoolmastership again
like
that,
so
that
I
do
not
have to
feel like
a
renegade
deserter.
I
am
writing
you
today
about
something
else,
however.
Namely,
I
still have
little
stomach
for
your
recent result
on
the
fluctuations of ionization
by 7-rays,
and for
theoretical
reasons
I
am
firmly
convinced
that the statistical
dependencies
you
have found in
the
two
cases
were
based
on
secondary ß
or
7-rays
that had
entered from
one
chamber into
the
other.[3]
The theoretical
basis for
my
view is
the
following.
The
energy
that
appears
during
elementary 7
absorption is
of the
same
order
as
the
energy
an
electron must have in order to
generate
the
7
or
Roentgen impulse
through
de-
celeration.
Therefore,
each radioactive
elementary decay process probably
corre-
sponds
to
a
single absorption process.
The
decay
of
one
radioactive
atom
can
thus
never
correspond
to
an
elementary absorption process
in
both
of
the
two
chambers.
So
any
sort of
statistical relation
between the
elementary processes
of
absorption
in
both
chambers
is
out of
the
question,
whatever
the
particular
theory
behind
it
may
be.
I would
now
like
to ask
you very earnestly
to take
up experimenting
on
the
subject
again;[4]
you
would
really
do
a
service for
a
good
cause.
There
are-as
far
as
I
can
see-two ways
open.
Either
one
varies distance
a
between
the
two
chambers
and
examines whether the fluctuation
dependence changes
with
a,[5]
aperture