Word: elements
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Gestapo? In a pamphlet called "How to Capture a University," Beaty charged that "a certain powerful, non-Christian element in our population" was trying to "dominate Southern Methodist University." For one thing, the university's own Southwest Review seemed to be highly susceptible not only to anti-McCarthy authors (e.g., President Henry Wriston of Brown University) but also to B'nai B'rith, which, according to Beaty, "is sometimes referred to as the 'Jewish Gestapo...
...opening night drew near, Copland's shy doubts returned. The Tender Land, as he conceived it, was really only a step along the road to a full-evening opera to come; perhaps he was wrong to show it in Manhattan at all. He also worried about the human element: "When I write a symphony," he says, "I know the orchestra and just how it will play my music." Singers are comparatively unpredictable. But more important to Stylist Copland was the fact that he had foregone "the absolute originality of every measure," turned in an uncharacteristically relaxed score. "This...
...scientists, however, did not forget fusion. Graven on their minds was a curious set of facts: when the elements are arranged in series according to their atomic weights, the atoms of those in the center of the series are lighter than they "should be." So when an atom of uranium (the heaviest natural element) splits into two fragments and a few loose neutrons, all the pieces, added together, weigh less than the original uranium atom. By Einstein's famous equation (E = Mc2), this loss of weight shows up as the energy that powers uranium bombs...
...light end of the series. If light atoms, e.g., hydrogen, are packed together into a larger atom, it weighs less than the pieces that form it. Here again, the loss of weight shows up as energy. A little figuring told the physicists that a given amount of a light element, forced to fuse, would yield more energy than the same amount of uranium. Besides, light elements are plentiful, while uranium is scarce...
...atom bomb at the instant of explosion is fabulously high, but as the fireball expands, it cools off rapidly. If it cools too fast, any fusion reaction that it has started will die out. But if the high temperature lasts long enough, it will "ignite" the light elements. Then the fusion reaction will continue, generating energy to keep the materials hot until a large part of the light-element charge has been fired...