Word: atomically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...atomic bomb dropped at Bikini was not the clap of doom, but it was an ominous sample. Because it sank only a handful of ships, around the world there were some who scoffed at it. But military men saw a point that few laymen seemed to consider: in war a power with mastery of the atom would no more attack a prime enemy target with one bomb than a machine-gunner would go into battle with one round in his magazine...
...walk away from the Big Four Conference Hall, the day after Bikini a long narrow mirror fastened to a wall suddenly fell to the ground without apparent cause. A crowd gathered about the broken glass that boded seven years of bad luck to someone. A frowzy woman murmured: "The atom bomb." The people near her nodded gravely...
Once, it was the gold brick. In Montreal last week it was the atom. Seven smooth swindlers dumped $500,000 worth of atom-bomb stock on scores of gullible Quebeckers. One investor, a Montreal physician, reportedly bit to the tune of $20,000. Since the atom bomb was top secret, the peddlers were mum about the way it was to be commercialized. But their fancy, engraved stock looked mighty pretty. A chunk of "deactivated bomb," a gear or two from an airplane motor, parts of a small lathe were more concrete come-ons. Provincial police, not impressed, arrested two atom...
...typical pile is a 20-foot block of graphite (pure carbon) interlarded with lumps of fissionable uranium. The chain begins with the capture of a neutron by a uranium atom. When the atom "fishes" (splits by fission), neutrons released by the reaction fly off at more than 6,000 miles a second. To give the neutrons a maximum chance of being captured by other uranium atoms, they are slowed to "thermal" speed-roughly 3 m.p.s. Normally a neutron slows down to that speed after about 110 collisions with carbon atoms...
...controlling fission, the nuclear physicists' big problem was to calculate the probability that a given atom would capture a neutron traveling at a given speed. They found that in a certain type of pile the critical size at which a lump of enriched uranium begins to cook in a nonexplosive chain reaction is 1.5 kilograms (about 3⅓ Ibs.). Theoretically, a pile might heat up to the temperature of the sun (over 6,000°), but no known container can withstand more than 1,500°. The physicists discovered that the simplest way to throttle down a pile...