A direct comparison is made between the energy spectrum of fission fragments from the spontaneous fission and from the thermal neutron induced fission in the same foils of natural uranium. The results show that, within the limits of the experiment, the two distributions are not significantly different from one another. Calculations are made which indicate the magnitude of the distortion of the energy spectrum to be expected, and the theory is found to agree satisfactorily with experiment. As a subsidiary result to the main experiment the rate for the spontaneous fission of natural uranium is found to be 24·2±1·5 per hour per gram.
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Whitehouse et al. (1950) studied this question.