Word: cadmium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Finally, the CRIMSON came to bat in the last half of the ninth inning: the evening shadows were lengthening in the sun now turned orange. The first man to the bat was the inspirational leader of the CRIMSON nine, Pompous Prexy Pratt, his face fiushed in the Cadmium sun. He reached first on a walk...
...transmutation. Pure gold (atomic weight 197), placed in an atomic pile and exposed to a storm of neutrons, is transmuted into a single mercury isotope with atomic weight 198. This one-isotope mercury gives off green light waves of extraordinary uniformity, as measuring sticks. They are much better than cadmium light; they are vastly better than the meter bar. Scientists using mercury light should be able to measure with an accuracy of one part in 100 million...
...bomb-tamers of Los Alamos had a ticklish assignment: to make their bomb explode, but gently, in slow motion. How they solved the problem has not been fully explained. Uranium piles are kept from reacting too fast by inserting cadmium rods into the graphite. The rods absorb neutrons and check the action. The more cadmium, the slower the pile percolates. Some similar method may be controlling the tame plutonium...
...small group of physicists gathered in the squash court for the final test. Partly shrouded in balloon cloth,* the pile squatted black and menacing. Within it, all knew or hoped, a monstrous giant sat chained. Control rods plated with cadmium (which readily absorbs neutrons) had been thrust into holes in the graphite. When the control rods were removed, Fermi had calculated, the chain reaction would start spontaneously, and the giant would be free...
...physicists knew that they were in dangerous, unknown territory. So above the pile was stationed a "liquid-control squad" to douse mutinous neutrons with cadmium-salt solution...