Word: slow
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
While Republicans complained that they had been given a slow horse for a fast race, Democrats prepared to fight Bill Knowland next year. Their favored candidate was another newspaperman: New Dealer Manchester Boddy, dapper 54-year-old camellia king and publisher of Los Angeles' fast-stepping, politically potent Daily News...
...Slow Wheels. The War Department said the 86th had already been screened twice, the 95th once, to avoid sending highpoint men overseas. The Navy Department's stock answer to protests was that its policy was being "clarified," that 1,500,000 to 2,500,000 men would be discharged within 18 months...
Explosive Calculations. Before the war it was discovered that slow-moving neutrons could split the atoms of the uranium isotope, U-235, giving a mighty gush of energy. Besides energy, their "fission" produced more flying neutrons. If enough of these in turn split uranium atoms, the reaction would maintain itself, gain momentum. It would flash through all the uranium, like the flame of a match through excelsior...
...Elements. There was one more possibility. When natural uranium (one part U-235, 140 parts U-238) is bombarded with slow neutrons, more happens than the cracking of the U-235 particles. Some of the neutrons produced by these fissions are absorbed by the more phlegmatic U-238; This forms a new, unstable element, neptunium, which soon turns into plutonium...
This last could be done by imbedding small bits of uranium in a "moderator"-a substance which would slow the speed of the neutrons but not absorb them. The Germans may have tried heavy water for this job. The Manhattan District men decided on graphite which was easier to get. If they could produce plutonium at an orderly controlled rate, they would have a charge for the bomb that would change the world...