Word: electron
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
HALF-BURIED in a mount of earth behind the Biological Labs lies the newest and most spectacular addition to the University's scientific facilities, the Cambridge Electron Accelerator. Built in conjunction with M.I.T., the accelerator is the largest and most powerful in the world, and is expected to probe deeply into the many unsolved problems of high energy physics...
...Cambridge accelerator is five times more powerful than any other, able to whip electrons to speeds very near the speed of light. It was built by the Atomic Energy Commission after four years of planning at a cost of 12 million dollars, and operating expenses may exceed four million dollars yearly. When in operation, the accelerator magnets consume 1034 kilowatts--the power required by 100 average American homes. Electrons travel 14,000 miles around the accelerator's ring of magnets in eight milliseconds, and emerge with an energy of six billion electron volts...
Indeed, strong evidence exists for this argument. Certainly, the bulk of Federal aid in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is distributed among the chemists, physicists, and applied mathematicians. For example, the government gives $5 million yearly to cover the administrative costs of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a machine which cost $11.6 million in Federal funds to build. Significantly, the $6 million the government put into medical research in 1960 more than doubled the combined total offered that year to the Schools of Public Health, Dental Medicine, Education, Divinity, Public Administration, Law, Business Administration, and Design...
...Cambridge Electron Accelerator is said to have cost more than all of the equipment theretofore available at Harvard for work in the natural sciences. At Stanford University work is beginning on an accelerator project which will cost $114 million, or about as much as the entire Stanford endowment. These things are not bad, striking as they may be. But they do present very real problems to any university which wants to be or to remain a center for the development of truly universal knowledge...
...miles of the earth's surface. Over the Pacific it stays 500 miles above the surface. In latitude, it extends 1,800 miles north and south of the magnetic equator. It is 3,100 miles thick, reaching well into the Van Allen belt of natural radiation. Its spiraling electrons, which originated in the high altitude test explosion, have as much as 1.,00,000 electron-volts of energy. At their strongest, they are about ten times as intense as the natural radiation...