Uranium
Uranium-235 was the first isotope that was found to be fissile. Other naturally occurring isotopes are fissionable, but not fissile. On bombardment with slow neutrons, its uranium-235 isotope will most of the time divide into two smaller nuclei, releasing nuclear binding energy and more neutrons. If too many of these neutrons are absorbed by other uranium-235 nuclei, a nuclear chain reaction occurs that results in a burst of heat or (in special circumstances) an explosion. In a nuclear reactor, such a chain reaction is slowed and controlled by a neutron poison, absorbing some of the free neutrons. Such neutron absorbent materials are often part of reactor control rods (see nuclear reactor physics for a description of this process of reactor control).
History of nuclear weapons
In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and it quickly became unsafe for Jewish scientists to remain in the country. Leó Szilárd fled to London where he proposed, and in 1934 patented, the idea of a nuclear chain reaction via neutrons. The patent also introduced the term critical mass to describe the minimum amount of material required to sustain the chain reaction and its potential to cause an explosion. (British patent 630,726.) He subsequently assigned the patent to the British Admiralty so that it could be covered by the Official Secrets Act. In a very real sense, Szilárd was the father of the atomic bomb academically. Also in 1934, Irène and Frédéric Joliot - Curie discovered that artificial radioactivity could be induced in stable elements by bombarding them with alpha particles; Enrico Fermi reported similar results when bombarding uranium with neutrons.
Chemical element
A chemical element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei (that is, the same atomic number, or Z). 118 elements are identified, of which the first 94 occur naturally on Earth with the remaining 24 being synthetic elements. There are 80 elements that have at least one stable isotope and 38 that have exclusively radionuclides, which decay over time into other elements. Iron is the most abundant element (by mass) making up Earth, while oxygen is the most common element in the Earth's crust.
Stellar rotation
A neutron star is a highly dense remnant of a star that is primarily composed of neutrons—a particle that is found in most atomic nuclei and has no net electrical charge. The mass of a neutron star is in the range of 1.2 to 2.1 times the mass of the Sun. As a result of the collapse, a newly formed neutron star can have a very rapid rate of rotation; on the order of a hundred rotations per second.
Electric field
An electric field is a field that surrounds electric charges. It represents charges attracting or repelling other electric charges by exerting force. Mathematically the electric field is a vector field that associates to each point in space the force, called the Coulomb force, that would be experienced per unit of charge, by an infinitesimal test charge at that point. The units of the electric field in the SI system are newtons per coulomb (N / C), or volts per meter (V / m). Electric fields are created by electric charges, and by time - varying magnetic fields. Electric fields are important in many areas of physics, and are exploited practically in electrical technology. On an atomic scale, the electric field is responsible for the attractive force between the atomic nucleus and electrons that holds atoms together, and the forces between atoms that cause chemical bonding. The electric field and the magnetic field together form the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature.
Lepton
The first charged lepton, the electron, was theorized in the mid-19th century by several scientists and was discovered in 1897 by J. J. Thomson. The next lepton to be observed was the muon, discovered by Carl D. Anderson in 1936, which was classified as a meson at the time. After investigation, it was realized that the muon did not have the expected properties of a meson, but rather behaved like an electron, only with higher mass. It took until 1947 for the concept of "leptons" as a family of particle to be proposed. The first neutrino, the electron neutrino, was proposed by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930 to explain certain characteristics of beta decay. It was first observed in the Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment conducted by Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines in 1956. The muon neutrino was discovered in 1962 by Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger, and the tau discovered between 1974 and 1977 by Martin Lewis Perl and his colleagues from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The tau neutrino remained elusive until July 2000, when the DONUT collaboration from Fermilab announced its discovery.Leptons are an important part of the Standard Model. Electrons are one of the components of atoms, alongside protons and neutrons. Exotic atoms with muons and taus instead of electrons can also be synthesized, as well as lepton–antilepton particles such as positronium.
Atomic nucleus
The nucleus was discovered in 1911, as a result of Ernest Rutherford's efforts to test Thomson's ``plum pudding model ''of the atom. The electron had already been discovered earlier by J.J. Thomson himself. Knowing that atoms are electrically neutral, Thomson postulated that there must be a positive charge as well. In his plum pudding model, Thomson suggested that an atom consisted of negative electrons randomly scattered within a sphere of positive charge. Ernest Rutherford later devised an experiment with his research partner Hans Geiger and with help of Ernest Marsden, that involved the deflection of alpha particles (helium nuclei) directed at a thin sheet of metal foil. He reasoned that if Thomson's model were correct, the positively charged alpha particles would easily pass through the foil with very little deviation in their paths, as the foil should act as electrically neutral if the negative and positive charges are so intimately mixed as to make it appear neutral. To his surprise, many of the particles were deflected at very large angles. Because the mass of an alpha particle is about 8000 times that of an electron, it became apparent that a very strong force must be present if it could deflect the massive and fast moving alpha particles. He realized that the plum pudding model could not be accurate and that the deflections of the alpha particles could only be explained if the positive and negative charges were separated from each other and that the mass of the atom was a concentrated point of positive charge. This justified the idea of a nuclear atom with a dense center of positive charge and mass.
Beta decay
In nuclear physics, beta decay (β - decay) is a type of radioactive decay in which a beta ray (fast energetic electron or positron) and a neutrino are emitted from an atomic nucleus. For example, beta decay of a neutron transforms it into a proton by the emission of an electron, or conversely a proton is converted into a neutron by the emission of a positron (positron emission), thus changing the nuclide type. Neither the beta particle nor its associated neutrino exist within the nucleus prior to beta decay, but are created in the decay process. By this process, unstable atoms obtain a more stable ratio of protons to neutrons. The probability of a nuclide decaying due to beta and other forms of decay is determined by its nuclear binding energy. The binding energies of all existing nuclides form what is called the nuclear band or valley of stability. For either electron or positron emission to be energetically possible, the energy release (see below) or Q value must be positive.
Nuclear fuel
Most nuclear fuels contain heavy fissile elements that are capable of nuclear fission, such as uranium - 235 or plutonium - 239. When the unstable nuclei of these atoms are hit by a slow - moving neutron, they split, creating two daughter nuclei and two or three more neutrons. These neutrons then go on to split more nuclei. This creates a self - sustaining chain reaction that is controlled in a nuclear reactor, or uncontrolled in a nuclear weapon.
Neutron
In 1931, Walther Bothe and Herbert Becker found that if alpha particle radiation from polonium fell on beryllium, boron, or lithium, an unusually penetrating radiation was produced. The radiation was not influenced by an electric field, so Bothe and Becker assumed it was gamma radiation. The following year Irène Joliot - Curie and Frédéric Joliot in Paris showed that if this ``gamma ''radiation fell on paraffin, or any other hydrogen - containing compound, it ejected protons of very high energy. Neither Rutherford nor James Chadwick at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge were convinced by the gamma ray interpretation. Chadwick quickly performed a series of experiments that showed that the new radiation consisted of uncharged particles with about the same mass as the proton. These particles were neutrons. Chadwick won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery in 1935.
Force
The weak force is due to the exchange of the heavy W and Z bosons. Its most familiar effect is beta decay (of neutrons in atomic nuclei) and the associated radioactivity. The word "weak" derives from the fact that the field strength is some 1013 times less than that of the strong force. Still, it is stronger than gravity over short distances. A consistent electroweak theory has also been developed, which shows that electromagnetic forces and the weak force are indistinguishable at a temperatures in excess of approximately 1015 kelvins. Such temperatures have been probed in modern particle accelerators and show the conditions of the universe in the early moments of the Big Bang.
Force
All of the forces in the universe are based on four fundamental interactions. The strong and weak forces are nuclear forces that act only at very short distances, and are responsible for the interactions between subatomic particles, including nucleons and compound nuclei. The electromagnetic force acts between electric charges, and the gravitational force acts between masses. All other forces in nature derive from these four fundamental interactions. For example, friction is a manifestation of the electromagnetic force acting between the atoms of two surfaces, and the Pauli exclusion principle, which does not permit atoms to pass through each other. Similarly, the forces in springs, modeled by Hooke's law, are the result of electromagnetic forces and the Exclusion Principle acting together to return an object to its equilibrium position. Centrifugal forces are acceleration forces that arise simply from the acceleration of rotating frames of reference.:12-11:359
History of nuclear weapons
In the first decades of the 20th century, physics was revolutionised with developments in the understanding of the nature of atoms. In 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered that pitchblende, an ore of uranium, contained a substance -- which they named radium -- that emitted large amounts of radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified that atoms were breaking down and turning into different elements. Hopes were raised among scientists and laymen that the elements around us could contain tremendous amounts of unseen energy, waiting to be harnessed.
James Chadwick
During the Second World War, Chadwick carried out research as part of the Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb, while his Manchester lab and environs were harassed by Luftwaffe bombing. When the Quebec Agreement merged his project with the American Manhattan Project, he became part of the British Mission, and worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory and in Washington, D.C. He surprised everyone by earning the almost-complete trust of project director Leslie R. Groves, Jr. For his efforts, Chadwick received a knighthood in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1945. In July 1945, he viewed the Trinity nuclear test. After this, he served as the British scientific advisor to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Uncomfortable with the trend toward Big Science, Chadwick became the Master of Gonville and Caius College in 1948. He retired in 1959.
Neutron star
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a large star which before collapse had a total of between 10 and 29 solar masses. Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars known to exist. Though neutron stars typically have a radius on the order of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi), they can have masses of about twice that of the Sun. They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, combined with gravitational collapse, that compresses the core past the white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei. Once formed, they no longer actively generate heat and cool over time; however, they may still evolve further through collision or accretion. Most of the basic models for these objects imply that neutron stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles with no net electrical charge and with slightly larger mass than protons. Neutron stars are supported against further collapse by neutron degeneracy pressure, a phenomenon described by the Pauli exclusion principle, just as white dwarfs are supported against collapse by electron degeneracy pressure. If the remnant star has a mass greater than about 3 solar masses, it continues collapsing to form a black hole.
Alpha decay
Alpha decay or α - decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and thereby transforms or 'decays' into an atom with a mass number that is reduced by four and an atomic number that is reduced by two. An alpha particle is identical to the nucleus of a helium - 4 atom, which consists of two protons and two neutrons. It has a charge of + 2e and a mass of 4u. For example, uranium - 238 decays to form thorium - 234. Alpha particles have a charge + 2, but as a nuclear equation describes a nuclear reaction without considering the electrons -- a convention that does not imply that the nuclei necessarily occur in neutral atoms -- the charge is not usually shown.
Atomic number
All consideration of nuclear electrons ended with James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932. An atom of gold now was seen as containing 118 neutrons rather than 118 nuclear electrons, and its positive charge now was realized to come entirely from a content of 79 protons. After 1932, therefore, an element's atomic number Z was also realized to be identical to the proton number of its nuclei.
RRAT J1819-1458
RRAT J1819-1458 is a Milky Way neutron star and the best studied of the class of rotating radio transients (RRATs) first discovered in 2006.
Dayton Project
At Los Alamos, physicist Robert Serber proposed that instead of relying on spontaneous fission, the chain reaction inside the atomic bomb should be triggered by a neutron initiator. The best - known neutron sources were radium - beryllium and polonium - beryllium. The latter was chosen, as polonium has a 138 - day half - life, which made it intense enough to be useful but not long - lived enough to be stockpiled. Thomas took charge of the development of techniques to industrially refine polonium for use with beryllium in the ``urchin ''internal neutron initiators. This effort became the Dayton Project.
Mössbauer effect
The Mössbauer effect, or recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence, is a physical phenomenon discovered by Rudolf Mössbauer in 1958. It involves the resonant and recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma radiation by atomic nuclei bound in a solid. Its main application is in Mössbauer spectroscopy.
What was the person who discovered that nuclei of atoms contained neutrons with no charge a participant in?
who discovered that the nuclei of atoms contained neutrons that carries no charge
James Chadwick
#1 >> participant in
Manhattan Project