The photolysis of ammonia
It has been shown in the preceding paper that the hypothesis that hydrazine is responsible for the anomalously low hydrogen atom concentration in the decomposition of ammonia must be abandoned. In order to explain this important discrepancy some new experimental techniques require to be developed which will settle the matter without appeal to further hypotheses. There are two general explanations of the discrepancy: (1) the hydrogen atoms are not produced as fast as that calculated on the assumption that every ammonia molecule absorbing a quantum necessarily decomposes, (2) that some entity not yet recognized removes hydrogen atoms at a rate faster than that at which they normally recombine. In this paper methods will be described in which these two problems are solved, and finally there is a discussion of the photochemistry of ammonia in the light of the new results obtained during these experiments.