American Scientist Online - Probing the Nucleus
American Scientist Online - Probing the Nucleus: "The discovery of the neutron, announced by Chadwick at the Cavendish scant months before the Cockcroft-Walton results and also described briefly by Cathcart, was probably more important to nuclear science: It made possible a quantum field theory of a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons, and it provided experimentalists with a new tool for provoking nuclear disintegrations, because the neutron is not repelled by the positive charge of the nucleus.
Cathcart rightly notes that it was not scientists but rather journalists who seized on the Cockcroft-Walton results as the 'splitting of the atom' and hence as the first step toward limitless energy, whether peaceful or not. Never mind that their experiment had produced a number of discrete events, not a chain reaction, and moreover that it consumed more energy than it released. Cathcart has previously written on the British atomic-bomb program, and he notes here that 'Modern perceptions of what was achieved in the Cavendish laboratory in 1932 are inevitably coloured by the atomic bombs and the Cold War that followed.' He denies that the Cavendish physicists were driven by dreams of bombs or reactors—and anyway, he notes, the neutron likewise proved more crucial to the eventual detection and development of atomic fission. But if this book is not about the last gentleman scientists, or the central experiment of the age, or even the initial step on the path to Hiroshima, it does show how intellectual curiosity led physicists simultaneously into the nucleus, into new partnerships with industry and into new modes of research."
Cathcart rightly notes that it was not scientists but rather journalists who seized on the Cockcroft-Walton results as the 'splitting of the atom' and hence as the first step toward limitless energy, whether peaceful or not. Never mind that their experiment had produced a number of discrete events, not a chain reaction, and moreover that it consumed more energy than it released. Cathcart has previously written on the British atomic-bomb program, and he notes here that 'Modern perceptions of what was achieved in the Cavendish laboratory in 1932 are inevitably coloured by the atomic bombs and the Cold War that followed.' He denies that the Cavendish physicists were driven by dreams of bombs or reactors—and anyway, he notes, the neutron likewise proved more crucial to the eventual detection and development of atomic fission. But if this book is not about the last gentleman scientists, or the central experiment of the age, or even the initial step on the path to Hiroshima, it does show how intellectual curiosity led physicists simultaneously into the nucleus, into new partnerships with industry and into new modes of research."
posted by Greta Jane at Saturday, July 09, 2005
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