Download Unravelling the Mystery of the Atomic Nucleus: A Sixty Year by Bernard Fernandez PDF

By Bernard Fernandez

Unravelling the secret of the Atomic Nucleus is a historical past of atomic and nuclear physics. It starts in 1896 with the invention of radioactivity, which ends up in the invention of the nucleus on the heart of the atom. It follows the experimental discoveries and the theoretical advancements as much as the top of the Fifties.

Unlike prior books concerning on heritage of nuclear physics, this ebook methodically describes how advances in know-how enabled physicists to probe the actual homes of nuclei in addition to how the actual legislation which govern those microscopic platforms have been steadily stumbled on. The reader will achieve a transparent figuring out of the way idea is inextricably intertwined with the development of know-how.

Unravelling the secret of the Atomic Nucleus should be of curiosity to physicists and to historians of physics, in addition to these improvement of science.

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J. ” In the preface, he states his philosophy: The phenomena exhibited by the radioactive bodies are extremely complicated, and some form of theory is essential to connect in an intelligible manner the mass of experimental facts that have now been accumulated. I have found the theory that the atoms of the radioactive bodies are undergoing spontaneous disintegration extremely serviceable, not only in correlating the known phenomena, but also in suggesting new lines of research. The Puzzle Is Disentangled 35 It must be admitted that his theory does explain the observations and succeeds in unravelling what appeared to be an inextricable puzzle.

Each known element (uranium, thorium, and radium) is the starting point of a succession of radioactive transformations: uranium transforms into uranium X, what follows is not known; thorium transforms into thorium X, which transforms into the “thorium emanation,” etc. [104] The proportional amount of radioactive matter that changes in unit time is constant. This is an alternative way to express the law of exponential decay. They add: The complexity of the phenomena of radioactivity is due to the existence as a general rule of several different types of matter changing at the same time into one another, each type possessing a different radioactive constant.

How do the measured values of Pierre Curie compare with those of Rutherford? It takes 1,600 years for half a gram of a radium sample to decay so that, according to the estimate of Rutherford, it would release at least a dozen gramme-calories per hour, possibly 10 or a 100 times more. This estimate is quite compatible with the measurement of Pierre Curie, who quotes 100 cal/h. The theory of Rutherford and Soddy was not immediately approved by everyone. J. J. Thomson was readily convinced, but the idea of a transmutation, even if the word wasn’t used, was difficult to swallow, especially by chemists and also by Lord Kelvin, who found it hard to believe that so much energy could be stored in an atom.

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