Word: electronics
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...Dirac is the genius who sensed the existence of the positron (positive electron) by figuring how a "hole" would behave if one should appear in a field of (negative) electrons. The hole, he decided, would act like a positive electron. Though no such particle had ever been found, colleagues began to look. Sure enough, they found the holes, as tangible as anything in basic physics, and named them "positrons...
...Meson. Last week 500 ultra-physicists gathered in Manhattan at a meeting of the American Physical Society to discuss this unfinished business. The meson (pronounced mees-on) was the star of the convention. Most physicists agreed that this subatomic particle, which weighs 200 times as much as an electron, was the key to the problem...
...human proton-buster's problem: how to make a machine that approaches the power of a cosmic ray bullet. The most powerful machine in existence (General Electric's betatron) develops 100 million electron volts. Physicists now aim at one billion volts. The big news at Berkeley: they are getting warm...
...relativity effect has limited most cyclotrons to considerably less than 100 million electron volts. But last week California's Physicist Edwin M. McMillan reported that he had found a way to thwart relativity. His device: a frequency modulator (the same principle as in FM radio) which automatically adjusts the frequency of a cyclotron's kicks to the speed of its bullets. It will beef up California's new 184-inch cyclotron (to be completed by autumn) to 200-400 million electron volts...
...great surprise of classical physicists, the electrons, recorded on a screen after they went through the holes, made a wave "interference" pattern. The experiment proved that, somehow, each electron went through both holes at once. The discovery, a great blow to the notion that matter is indivisible, led to the theory that a particle can be broken up into fields of energy which alternately reinforce and cancel each other, exactly like waves...