Word: proton
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Tritium is the big brother of the hydrogen family. Ordinary hydrogen has one lone proton in its nucleus with an electron circling around it. Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) has one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Tritium (heavy heavy hydrogen) has one proton and two neutrons. It is feebly radioactive, with a half-life of about twelve years. Drs. Libby and Grosse detected it through its radiation in samples of heavy (deuterium-containing) water. Its presence in heavy water had been suspected for some time, but not conclusively proved...
...hydrogen bomb's necessary ingredients (a principal one, Dr. Bacher implies) is tritium, the heavy form of hydrogen with one proton and two neutrons in its nucleus. Tritium must be made in a chain-reacting pile by a reaction that costs one free neutron for every atom of tritium produced. There are plenty of free neutrons in a pile, but they originate in fissioning atoms of uranium-235 and are normally used to form plutonium (for atom bombs) out of nonfissionable U-238. Each neutron that is used to form an atom of tritium means less plutonium...
Hydrogen fusion works in the opposite way by forming "paperbag" nuclei out of smaller units. Deuterium (heavy hydrogen), for instance, has one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. When two deuterium nuclei are fused together, they form a helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) that weighs less than two deuterium nuclei. As in uranium fission the weight loss turns into free energy. It is this fusion of lighter nuclei into helium that will power the hydrogen bomb...
...ingredient will be tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen which was discussed guardedly in the latest report of the Atomic Energy Commission. The nucleus of tritium has one proton and two neutrons. When it is struck by a highspeed proton (a nucleus of ordinary hydrogen), the two combine into helium and yield a great jolt of energy (see chart...
Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) may be used as a convenient source of reactive neutrons and protons. Another ingredient will probably be lithium, which has three protons and four neutrons in its nucleus. When joined by a proton, lithium turns into two helium nuclei. Lithium 6 (an isotope of lithium with three protons and three neutrons) may be used too. It combines with tritium to give two helium nuclei plus a free neutron...