Word: carbons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...years ago a Smithsonian-National Geographic Society-University of California expedition excavated an Olmec ceremonial center at La Venta, a marsh-surrounded island near the Tovala River. They found among the relics several fragments of charcoal, presumably the remains of ceremonial fires. The carbon 14 content of the charcoal bits taken from La Venta's lowest level gave its average date as 814 B.C., with a maximum possible error of 134 years...
Guided by carbon 14, the modern touchstone of archaeology, the diggers hope to find out what happened during the long dark age between the fall of the Olmecs and the rise of the Mayans...
Overstuffed Atom. Fields and his colleague Arnold Friedman decided that the best bet would be to bombard curium with carbon ions in a cyclotron. This would be quite a trick; curium, element No. 96, is itself synthetic and intensely radioactive. If any of it were fattened into element 102, the fragile, overstuffed atoms would predictably disintegrate in a few minutes...
Fields and Friedman interested British Chemist John Milsted, who wangled some time on the Stockholm cyclotron, the only one in operation capable of projecting a sufficiently intense beam of carbon ions. Milsted also undertook the tricky job of making curium into a thin film, and sandwiching it between aluminum foil to form a suitable target. The apparatus was arranged so that any atoms of element 102 formed would be knocked out of the target and would stick to a "catcher foil," a bit of plastic film...
...returned, and he started cursing again-from ten to 40 times an hour. "By this time," notes Psychiatrist Michael, "both his mother and his sister were refusing to accompany him out of the house." When psychotherapy failed, Dr. Michael tried giving his patient inhalations of carbon dioxide four times a week, hoping to slow down the responses of the nervous system. "The frequency of his utterances decreased," reports the doctor, "and he was discharged from the hospital after 30 treatments." Minus his tic and with an innocent tongue, the patient is now a happy sales representative for an English firm...