In operation, a separate current flows through the cathode " filament ", heating it so that some of the electrons in the metal gain sufficient energy to escape their parent atoms into the vacuum of the tube, a process called thermionic emission.
12.
As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point, boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons are so energized that they leave their parent atoms.
13.
:: Venturing into physics for context and acknowledging half-life represents a transformation between two atoms where the daughter increases in direct and absolute proportion to the decrease in parent atoms where the sum total of atoms remains the same, would the above usage be adequate in your opinion to express and clarify the idea that a situation where the number of parent isotopes is less than one but greater than zero can not exist since half-life is not an infinite process ( as it might be if atoms were divisible by the half-life process ) but terminates when the parent isotope is less than one ? 71.100.167.194 23 : 49, 29 September 2006 ( UTC)
