Word: atomization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...they are not animal, vegetable and mineral. In fact, all the matter most people are familiar with can be subsumed within one family of particles. This family includes the common electron, which hovers around the nucleus of the atom; the "up" and "down" varieties of quarks, now known to be the constituents of protons and neutrons; and an obscure particle known as the electron neutrino. Neutrinos have no charge and no measured mass, yet are thought to be among the most abundant particles in the universe...
Ramsey was awarded half of the $470,000 prize for his contributions in pioneering a method of measuring the minute movements that occur inside atoms. Ramsey's so-called separated oscillatory fields technique did not just become a valuable scientific tool; it also provided the basis for modern-day atomic clocks. Like the ticking of a pendulum in a grandfather clock, the rapid-fire (9,192,631.770 times a second) oscillations of cesium-atom nuclei, spinning like tops inside a magnetic field, can be used to pace off time...
...most famous application of Ramsey's work is in the atomic clock, which uses the stable internal properties of an atom to define more accurately the units of time people use every...
Ramsey's procedure is so precise that the number of times the nucleus of a cesium atom rotates now can be measured with an accuracy of one part in a trillion...
After the atoms are deflected by another magnet, the change in its path caused by the oscillating field can be detected, and from this the frequency of the atom's internal rotation can be measured...