Word: hahn
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Otto Hahn, 60, of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and his coworker, F. Strassmann, had bombarded uranium with neutrons. In the products of bombardment they found something which seemed to be atoms of barium. This barium was the clue to something terrific. For the huge uranium atom, heaviest of the 92 standard elements, weighs 238 units.* The barium atom weighs 137 units. Since the barium could have originated only as a fragment of the big uranium atom, it was logical to suppose that the latter had cracked asunder, in two nearly equal parts. The release of atomic energy...
...Hahn estimated the force of his explosion at 200,000,000 volts. There was no audible or visible violence, for the reason that the total quantity of energy released was not enough to knock a fly off the wall. It was a terrific explosion on a microcosmic scale. Enormous voltages impressed on sub-atomic particles will accelerate them to enormous speeds, but they are so infinitesimally small that the quantity of energy is negligible by ordinary standards.* But in the atomic world a force of 200,000,000 volts has hitherto been recorded only in cosmic ray showers, never...
...Hahn bombarded his bit of uranium with neutrons in order to obtain ekarhenium, a heavy element similarly created some years ago by Italian Physicist Enrico Fermi. Hahn obtained ekarhenium, all right, and something else he did not expect, which he identified as atoms of barium and krypton. He applied the principles of quantum mechanics (atomic mathematics) to find out how much of a tempest in a test tube occurs when ekarhenium breaks up into barium and krypton. Answer: 200,000,000 volts...
Last week the Hahn report reached the U. S. and physicists sprang to their laboratories to see whether they could confirm it. Early this week the physics laboratories of Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities, and of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, announced full confirmation...
Meanwhile, the Hahn report must have brought commingled pleasure and discomfiture to his colleague, crusty old Physicist Johannes Stark, who heads the Reich Physical-Technical Institute. Johannes Stark whoops up the Nazi idea that physical experiment is better than theory, regards theory as "Jewish" in spirit. Hahn's high-voltage explosion was produced by experiment, but accidentally; and it could never have been evaluated or even recognized without the help of theory...