July 08, 2016 Friday
After the war, Chadwick once again met his mentor Hans Geiger at a conference in Cambridge in 1928.
(Little did these 2 men knew at that time that their nations were going to go at each others throat even more fiercely yet again).
Geiger gifted Chadwick with his latest version of Geiger counter that was far more effective than manual counting of scintillations on a zinc sulphide screen.
This new Geiger counter was capable of detecting all the 3 alpha, beta and gamma forms of radiation.
Meanwhile in Germany under the Nazi, Walther Bothe and his student Herbert Becker on bombarding beryllium with alpha particles from polonium had produced an unusual form of penetrating radiation.
Chadwick wanted to be sure.
So he now asked his student Hugh Webster to repeat and verify the findings of Walther Bothe and Herbert Becker.
Hugh Webster obediently obliged.
This set Chadwick's heart beat racing.
He at once was struck with the idea that this could be the evidence for what he and Rutherford had been contemplating for years: the neutron.
Then in January of 1932, Chadwick was drawn to another startling result.
The Curies (you must be expert on them by now) had succeeded in knocking of protons from paraffin wax using these very same unknown penetrating rays.
Or at least they thought so.
This small mistake of theirs' would probably cost them a Nobel Prize (not that they were short of it).
Chadwick and Rutherford knew it could not have been protons that were knocked off from the paraffin wax; they were too heavy for that.
It had to be neutrons!
Chadwick dropped everything else and devoted his full energy in proving the existence of the neutrons.
He devised an apparatus which combined all the above experiments.
Using Polonium as the source of alpha particles, he bombarded them into beryllium foil.
The resulting radiation was directed at paraffin wax.
The displaced particles were made to pass into the Geiger-Muller counter or a ionization chamber where they would be detected with an oscilloscope.
Just after experimenting for 2 weeks, he quickly (like Curie) sent a letter to Nature in February 1932 titled:
"Possible Existence of a Neutron".
In May of 1932, he published a detailed paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society titled:
"The Existence of a Neutron".
Chadwick's smartness and insight beat so many physicists to earn a place in the history of the greatest discoveries.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
After the war, Chadwick once again met his mentor Hans Geiger at a conference in Cambridge in 1928.
(Little did these 2 men knew at that time that their nations were going to go at each others throat even more fiercely yet again).
Geiger gifted Chadwick with his latest version of Geiger counter that was far more effective than manual counting of scintillations on a zinc sulphide screen.
This new Geiger counter was capable of detecting all the 3 alpha, beta and gamma forms of radiation.
Meanwhile in Germany under the Nazi, Walther Bothe and his student Herbert Becker on bombarding beryllium with alpha particles from polonium had produced an unusual form of penetrating radiation.
Chadwick wanted to be sure.
So he now asked his student Hugh Webster to repeat and verify the findings of Walther Bothe and Herbert Becker.
Hugh Webster obediently obliged.
This set Chadwick's heart beat racing.
He at once was struck with the idea that this could be the evidence for what he and Rutherford had been contemplating for years: the neutron.
Then in January of 1932, Chadwick was drawn to another startling result.
The Curies (you must be expert on them by now) had succeeded in knocking of protons from paraffin wax using these very same unknown penetrating rays.
Or at least they thought so.
This small mistake of theirs' would probably cost them a Nobel Prize (not that they were short of it).
Chadwick and Rutherford knew it could not have been protons that were knocked off from the paraffin wax; they were too heavy for that.
It had to be neutrons!
Chadwick dropped everything else and devoted his full energy in proving the existence of the neutrons.
He devised an apparatus which combined all the above experiments.
Using Polonium as the source of alpha particles, he bombarded them into beryllium foil.
The resulting radiation was directed at paraffin wax.
The displaced particles were made to pass into the Geiger-Muller counter or a ionization chamber where they would be detected with an oscilloscope.
Just after experimenting for 2 weeks, he quickly (like Curie) sent a letter to Nature in February 1932 titled:
"Possible Existence of a Neutron".
In May of 1932, he published a detailed paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society titled:
"The Existence of a Neutron".
Chadwick's smartness and insight beat so many physicists to earn a place in the history of the greatest discoveries.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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