Word: electron
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...addition: C. Crane Brinton low in Dunster House; Preston K. and Sholem Postel, assistant directors of the University Health Services, John C. Wells, Jr., physician to the University Health Services; Mircea research fellow in Physics on the Cambridge Electron Accelerator; and Tonis, Security Officer and Chief of University Police
Scientists have long used high-energy protons (fundamental particles that form the nuclei of hydrogen atoms) as tools to explore the secret innards of matter. Two enormous accelerators, one at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, the other near Geneva, Switzerland, spew out protons with 30 billion electron-volts of energy. Yet in some ways protons are clumsy tools for basic research; for many subtle experiments, electrons (much lighter negative particles of electricity) are better. But electrons are so much more difficult to handle that scientists have never been able to give them really high energy. The Cambridge accelerator is designed...
Growing these fattened electrons is no easy job. They are shot into the accelerator's vacuum-ring in bunches of about 100 billion, already moving at close to the speed of light and carrying 25 million electron-volts of energy. If left to their own devices, they would move in straight lines, soon hitting the ring's outside wall. But the ring is surrounded by magnets whose power can be varied accurately. When each bunch of electrons enters, the magnetism is just strong enough to make them move in a circle, keeping away from the ring...
Another difficulty is the electrons' habit of losing much of the energy that is stuffed into them. When electrons move in a magnetic field, they turn some of their energy into "synchrotron radiation" that shoots off like mud slinging off a wheel. The more energy they have, the more they radiate away. When they have been fattened to about 1 billion electron-volts (or 1 BEV, as physicists call it), they begin to radiate visible light. At 2 BEV, they radiate the more powerful ultraviolet rays. At 4 BEV, they radiate X rays, losing several million electron-volts...
Probing the Unknown. Dr. Livingston, who collaborated as a graduate student with Nobel Prizewinner Ernest Lawrence to invent the first cyclotron, in 1930, points out that while the Cambridge electron accelerator does not approach the energy of the 30-BEV proton accelerator at Brookhaven, it has important special talents. Since its electron projectiles are very small compared with protons, they can be used to explore the unknown inner structure of both protons and neutrons. They generate beams of enormously powerful 6-BEV X rays, and these in turn can be used to explore matter. The same big X rays, which...