Word: cadmium
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...only decision left will be what kind of light waves to use as a standard. The Germans favor light given off by atoms of a krypton isotope. The Russians prefer cadmium 114. U.S. scientists would like to use mercury 198, which they have been making out of gold in a nuclear reactor...
...west stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, 42 scientists stared intently at a strange pile of graphite bricks. The time was 9:45 on a morning just ten years ago. Italian-born Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi gave the signal for the experiment to begin. A cadmium control rod was slowly drawn from position. Geiger counters clicked. Control lights flashed. The pen in an automatic recording device moved over graph paper in a rising curve. At 3:45 Dr. Fermi calmly announced: "The reaction is self-sustaining; the curve is exponential." A chain reaction had been achieved...
Heart of the system is an artificially grown crystal of cadmium sulphide, which acts as a sort of amplifier tube when excited by X radiation. It multiplies by 1,000,000 the energy it gets from X rays so the X-ray generator can be weak, cheap, safe...
...Ordered suppliers of cadmium (used for electroplating other metals) to fill no more than 50% of their defense orders on hand, allot the rest to essential civilian use until a long-range cadmium program is drawn up. Reason: cadmium is in such short supply that defense orders alone would easily gobble up more of the metal than is now available...
Karnol's strictly limited palette contained only one dull "earth" color, burnt sienna. The others, which he blended at will into a rainbow of subtle hues, were lead white, cadmium red and yellow, emerald green, ultramarine blue "and, very very seldom, a little black." He applied his colors to canvas with a feather-soft touch that was also precise enough to require hardly any preliminary drawing. Though some of the canvases had been in his studio for years, and had been worked over again & again, they all looked ripe and bright as peaches with the bloom intact...