Word: uranium
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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...
...Otto Hahn of Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute donned his work clothes, walked into his laboratory to perform a physical experiment. With a stream of neutrons (obtainable by subjecting a pinch of beryllium to the emanations of the radioactive gas radon) he bombarded a bit of uranium. While the routine little experiment proceeded all was peace and quiet in the laboratory. There was no crash of thunder, no flash of cataclysmic lightning...
...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...
Although the uranium atom was the most massive in the standard table of 92 elements, there was no theoretical reason why heavier elements should not exist...
Professor Fermi found them by bombarding uranium with a stream of neutrons (tiny particles which weigh about the same as a proton or hydrogen nucleus but have no electric charge). His bombarding neutrons slipped into the hearts of the uranium atoms, forming an unstable new element, ckarhcuium-No. 93. Similarly, in 1936, Dr. Fermi created a few atoms of ckaosmium-No. 94. Some of his other discoveries about neutrons: Having no electric charge, neutrons are not affected by the negative electric field outside an atom or by the positive charge on its nucleus. The only thing that stops them...