Word: hydrogenized
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Simplicity, however, is not hydrogen's only attribute. In its liquid state, it is one of the most intractable and unforgiving substances on earth. It is given to violent explosions on the slightest opportunity. It was only natural that the very presence of a tank of liquid hydrogen was immediately blamed last week for the blasts that rocked the Harvard-M.I.T. electron accelerator laboratory at Cambridge and injured eight young scientists...
...laboratory's new bubble chamber for the study of subnuclear particles lay twisted and scorched in the $1,000,000 wreckage. When all the evidence has been studied, the deceptively simple element may yet be exonerated. But significantly, when the accident occurred, the scientists were cautiously handling hydrogen, piping it into the 100-gal. bubble chamber...
Vicious Problem. Although a British scientist, Sir James Dewar, first liquefied hydrogen in 1898, it remained a mere curiosity until after World War II. Then it was enlisted as a tool in the modern specialty of cryogenics (the science and technology of very low temperatures), which has been instrumental in developments ranging from exotic new metals to important new discoveries in superconductivity. Liquid hydrogen came into its own when it was put to use in bubble chambers for experiments in high-energy physics. In such studies, accelerators smash the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, scattering subnuclear debris through the bubble...
Valuable as liquid hydrogen is in the lab, though, the men who use it can never forget its dangerous characteristics. The trouble is, it really does not want to be a liquid. Forced into a fluid state by powerful refrigeration machines, it must be sealed in a double-walled vacuum container and kept constantly below its boiling point (-423° F.) to control vaporization. As a liquid, it is not readily flammable. It is when it vaporizes and comes in contact with oxygen that hydrogen becomes explosive. Which makes for a vicious problem: how to let off the inevitable vapors...
Explosive Energy. The same property that makes liquid hydrogen so intractable makes it a powerful and efficient rocket fuel. For use in rockets, liquid hydrogen is changed to its gaseous state, mixed with an oxydizing agent and ignited. Its explosive energy is greater per unit of weight than that of any other fuel now in use: one-third more thrust for each pound of liquid hydrogen than for the same weight of kerosene-oxygen fuels. "The difference in performance of liquid hydrogen over any other rocket fuel," says Norman C. Reuel of North American Aviation's Rocketdyne division, "represents...