Word: cyclotronic
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Besides tossing off mesons, the G.E. betatron has smashed nearly every type of atom to smithereens. The other great atom-smasher, the cyclotron, is used to shoot high-velocity particles at atoms. The betatron shoots pure energy in the form of X rays. When the X rays hit the nucleus of an atom, they act something like a red-hot poker thrust into a glass of almost-boiling water. The added energy entering the nucleus causes some of its particles to "boil off" like steam. To celebrate their triumph, the G.E. scientists were already busy last week building more & more...
They sat up again with a start in 1940, when University of California scientists produced a new, "synthetic" element (neptunium) by bombarding uranium with neutrons from a cyclotron. Neptunium has 93 electrons, which meant that the list of known elements was growing at the heavy end. It grew some more that same year when Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg and co-workers synthesized plutonium, which has 94 electrons...
Returning from the site of the Manhattan Project development at Los Alamos, the Harvard Cyclotron is coming back to a new building which will be constructed specifically to house it. Pre-war researchers built the Cyclotron at the Gordon McKay Engineering Laboratories in 1938, The tremendous energies necessary in the atom-smashing experiments gave the scientists early indication of the fantastic powers locked in the nucleus of the atom...
Such a "gun" was invented in 1932 by University of California's brilliant young Ernest Orlando Lawrence. He called it a cyclotron. But the cyclotron failed to do more than chip off particles from the target nuclei, leaving the body of the nucleus intact, releasing comparatively little energy...
...chemistry with his wife, Irene Curie, had his Nazi troubles. His laboratories at Paris and Ivry were seized and in June, 1941 he had a twelve-hour ordeal with the Gestapo. He came through well enough to get back not only his laboratories but also the only French-owned cyclotron and a precious stock of radium.* Says he: "It wasn't funny. But after I had convinced them that I was all right, I was able to get back to work seriously...