Copper transmutation

While some contemporary alchemists such as Hunter, Emmens, Jollivet-Castelot, and Ayton had indeed tried to make gold, Ramsay s attempted transmutations led to a rush toward a different kind of treasure scientific immortality. Multiple chemists pursued the same kinds of experiments that Ramsay had, believing that they too had found positive results. They attempted to position themselves within the scientific world as the first to have proven artificial transmutation. Between 1907, when Ramsay announced his supposed copper transmutations in Nature, and 1914, when he abandoned his efforts, several significant chemists (including J. N. Collie, Hubert Patterson, E. C. C. Baly, Thomas Merton, Irvine Masson, and A. C. G. Egerton) all participated in experiments to use either radium emanation or cathode rays and X-rays to cause chemical transmutation. 

Ernest O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron) This member of the 5f transition elements (actinide series) was discovered in March 1961 by A. Ghiorso, T. Sikkeland, A.E. Larsh, and R.M. Latimer. A 3-Mg californium target, consisting of a mixture of isotopes of mass number 249, 250, 251, and 252, was bombarded with either lOB or IIB. The electrically charged transmutation nuclei recoiled with an atmosphere of helium and were collected on a thin copper conveyor tape which was then moved to place collected atoms in front of a series of solid-state detectors. The isotope of element 103 produced in this way decayed by emitting an 8.6 MeV alpha particle with a half-life of 8 s. 

The scene at the Chemical Society had transcended that ever experienced at a scientific meeting. Ramsay began by giving a clear and concise account of the reasons for his faith in transmutation, and alluded playfully to the criticisms that had been brought against his statements about the transformation of copper into lithium. 

As the transmutation rush continued across 1913 and 1914, the Alchemical Society continued to engage with scientific research. The engineer Herbert Chatley, in his December 12, 1913, talk to the Society entitled Alchemy in China, discussed Ramsay s transmutations, presumably his radon-induced supposed transmutations from copper to lithium and his observed transmutations of radium to helium. Chatley opined that a more gradual change would produce gold as one of the descending steps (37). And the December... 

It must be borne in mind when reviewing the theories of the alchemists, that there were a number of phenomena known at the time, the superficial examination of which would naturally engender a belief that the transmutation of the metals was a common occurrence. For example, the deposition of copper on iron when immersed in a solution of a copper salt e.g., blue vitriol) was naturally concluded to be a transmutation of iron into copper, although, had the alchemists examined the residual liquid, they would have found that the two metals had merely exchanged places and the fact that white and yellow alloys of copper with arsenic and other substances could be produced, pointed to the possibility of transmuting copper into silver and gold. It was also known that if water (and this is tme of distilled water which does not contain solid matter in solution) was boiled for some time in a glass flask, some solid, earthy matter was produced and if water could be transmuted into earth, surely one metal could be... 

A little later Madame Curie and Mademoiselle GHeditsch repeated Cameron and Ramsay s experiments on copper salts, using, however, platinum apparatus. They failed to detect lithium after the action of the emanation, and think that Cameron and Ramsay s results may be due to the glass vessels employed. Dr. Perman has investigated the direct action of the emanation on copper and gold, and has failed to detect any trace of lithium. The transmutation of copper into lithium, therefore, must be regarded as unproved, but further research is necessary before any conclusive statements can be made on the subject. 

It is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw out its soul. Copper is like a man it has a soul and a body. .. the soul is the most subtile part. .. that is to say, the tinctorial spirit. The body is the ponderable, material, terrestrial thing, endowed with a shadow. After a series of suitable treatments copper becomes without shadow and better than gold. The elements grow and are transmuted, because it is their qualities, not their substances which are contrary." (Stephanus of Alexandria, about 620 A.D.)... 

The concept of the philosopher s stone which appears under many names, was that of the existence of some substance which should act as a ferment just as yeast acts upon dough, some mystic substance which added to baser metals should induce the transmutation of larger quantities of these to gold or to silver. An idea of this character is of very early origin, hut any definite ideas as to the nature of this substance are lacking, and in the later alchemists, they take an infinity of forms. The philosopher s stone first appears about the seventh century in literature, hut it may be earlier. In the early centuries of alchemy, there was also developed a mass of symbolism which lost nothing of complexity and obscurity with the development of alchemy. Thus, the egg, symbol of the round universe, or of eternity the egg of the philosophers consisted, like the physical universe, of four components, white and yolk a skin and shell. These four constituents again are sometimes said to typify the four metals which form the basis for transmutation, copper, tin, lead and iron. 

As Soukup and Mayer have argued recently, "Without question, docimasy, namely, the analysis of ores and alloys of gold, silver, [and] copper, had great significance in Oberstockstall.. . . For anyone who had to examine ores or metal for coins, as well as for those who wanted to know whether their transmutations were finally crowned with success, exact balances, precise observations, and accurate computation were more important than wishes, conjectures, theories, and images." Ibid., 2. 

Transmutation of Copper into Lithium.—The transmutation of the baser metals into gold was one of the chief aims of the alchemists. Although their labours proved fruitless as regards their immediate object, they laid the foundation of that scientific chemistry to which the modem industrial world owes a deep debt of obligation. In 1818 Faraday contemplated as a possibility the transmutation of the metals, for he said in a lecture delivered before the City Philosophical Society To decompose the metals, to re-form them, and to realize the once absurd notion of transmutation—these are the problems now given to the chemist for solution. 6... 

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