Word: elemental
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Creating new heavy elements is a faint bit like working a pinball machine; it takes a nice judgment of speed. Last week a group of University of California scientists led by Professor Glenn Seaborg told how they created Element 98, which stands six steps up the periodic table (of chemical elements) from uranium, the heaviest natural element. They did it by shooting alpha particles (helium nuclei) at curium, another synthetic element, No. 96, created by a Seaborg group...
...reliable 60-inch cyclotron until it emitted alpha particles with 35 million electron volts of energy. This is not high power by modern standards (see above), but it did the trick. The alpha particles entered the curium nuclei and some of them stayed there, turning the curium into Element...
...scientists named their creation "californium" after their state and university. They did not manufacture much of it. The curium they used was an invisible film weighing a few millionths of a gram, and only a small fraction of it changed into californium. The new element proved so radioactive that half of it disintegrated in 45 minutes. It took fast action to identify it and measure some of its properties before it vanished...
Seaborg and his associates are understandably proud of their new element. By theoretical figuring, they predicted in advance what it would be like. Then, after the feat of creation, they found that californium was just as they expected...
Rick's upward struggles are cut to a minimum in order to bring in the psychiatric element. He is sped to New York, becomes a huge success, and meets Lauren Bacall, horribly miscast as a lady-psychiatrist. Most of what she says is unbelievable ("I am an intellectual mountain goat"). Her "class" bowls him over and he marries her, only to find that she is insanely jealous of his own success. This, and the fluff of a not-too-high note in recording session, make him go to pieces...