Word: alpha
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...powerful wave mathematics developed by Germany's Erwin Schrodinger, Drs. George Braxton Pegram, John R. Dunning and Isidor Isaac Rabi had to lead their particles like circus animals through a complex series of hoops & hurdles. Beryllium powder was placed in a glass tube containing the radioactive gas radon. Alpha particles from the radon knocked neutrons out of the beryllium. First hurdle was a metal ring which deflected part of the neutron beam toward a cylindrical detection chamber less than an inch across, a half-inch deep. The chamber's door was guarded by a paraffin screen from which...
...Rutgers one day last week 34 members of Lambda Chi Alpha were at luncheon when up drove a truck from which 700 gal. of fuel were piped into the tank of their oil-burning furnace. After luncheon all but nine members went off to classes...
Unquestioned was the priority and importance of last week's announcement from the Rue Pierre-Curie. With alpha particles, which for more than a decade have been used to bombard vulnerable substances, the Curie-Joliots attacked boron. The expected neutrons hopped out instantly. But positrons (positive electrons) shot out also, and kept on shooting out after the bombardment stopped, as though the boron had been stimulated into a state of radioactivity. After 15 minutes the positrons were still darting out 30% as fast as at first: after 30 minutes 9% as fast; after 45 minutes 2.7%. Theoretically the radiation...
This, according to the researchers, is probably what happens: The attacking alpha particle joins a boron atom to form a neutron (which flies off) and an unstable nitrogen atom which in a few seconds or minutes changes to a carbon atom with the release of a positron. Hence, just as the spontaneous radioactivity of radium turns it finally into lead, the end-product of boron's artificial radioactivity is carbon. Not only boron but magnesium and aluminum became radioactive under similar treatment...
...Junior year he broadened out, joined Signet, helped found Harvard's chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma chemical fraternity. Delta Upsilon made him its president. In 1913, aged 20 and a year ahead of his class, he was graduated magna cum lande with a brilliant record in chemistry...