I opened my birthday card and loads of rice fell out.
I knew right away who sent it...
It was my Uncle Ben.
Atom splitIn 1932, the atom was split by a proton beam on a lithium target. Two physicists, Englishman Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Irishman Errnest Walton had developed the first nuclear particle accelerator (the Cockcroft-Walton generator for which they shared 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics. The accelerator was built in a disused room in the Cavendish Laboratory. With this equipment, Walton succeeded in being the first to split the atom (its nucleus). When a proton from the beam supplied by the accelerator struck a lithium nucleus, their unstable combination disintegrated into two alpha particles (helim nuclei). Walton observed the scintillations characteristic of alpha particles on a zinc sulphide screen.« |
