Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 194 Chapter 142

On the third day after the letter to Rutherford was sent, the old man arrived in London early in the morning from Cambridge University.

Before meeting Chen Muwu, Rutherford had just arrived at the Royal Research Institute at 21 Albemarle Street, when Rutherford was given a blow by his precious student.

In order to catch the first train to London today, he woke up early and experienced several hours of bumpy travel. Rutherford, who had just got off the train, was going to take out his pipe, put a bag of cigarettes in his mouth and walk into the research institute The building, cheer up your tired spirit.

As a result, outside the gate of the Royal Research Institute, he saw that a no-smoking notice had been posted here.

This made Rutherford very strange. Isn't Old Prague also a smoker? How could he establish such a strange rule of "hurting one thousand enemies and eight hundred injuries" in the Royal Research Institute he managed?
But after all, this is someone else's territory, and Rutherford, who came from afar, had no choice but to be hospitable.

It's better to stand outside the door and finish smoking the bag of cigarettes before going in.

Chen Muwu, who was relaxed after finishing the experiment, came later than Rutherford today.

He threw the first draft of the paper on the discovery of deuterium to Oppenheimer.

Although he has little patience for experiments, writing a first draft of a paper is not a problem.

What's more, Oppenheimer is now in the mood to come up with the first research results in his life, not to mention asking him to write a thesis, or let him go to the busiest street in London, facing the flow of people coming and going, shouting "All eyes are on me, I announce something:...", it is estimated that Oppenheimer will not refuse, and he may even feel unsatisfied after shouting, take off his clothes and run around naked on the street .

As soon as Chen Muwu stepped out of the car assigned to him by Zhu Zhaoshen for private use at the Legation in the UK, he saw a familiar tall figure standing outside the gate, puffing a cloud.

"Teacher! Teacher!"

After the plexiglass was made, deuterium was discovered non-stop. Chen Muwu, who has been soaking in David Faraday's laboratory and never went back to Cambridge University, has not seen Rutherford for a long time.

"Chen, long time no see! After I received the letter you wrote a few days ago, I wanted to come over and see this new thing you found with my own eyes."

After a few months of separation, Chen Muwu felt a little uncomfortable when he heard the long-lost loud voice again.

After being forcibly hugged by Rutherford, he observed quietly and stood upwind, continuing to chat with the teacher.

"I heard that you helped old Henry earn a lot of money with a new invention, enough for him to rebuild the laboratory?"

"Teacher, it cannot be said that I am helping Sir Prague make money, but that I am helping myself.

"This historic David Faraday Laboratory is hard to live up to its reputation. The experimental equipment inside is very outdated, and it is simply not enough to support the low-temperature physics experiments I have always wanted to do.

"If it weren't for such a sum of money to solve the urgent need, I probably wouldn't be able to conduct the experiment until now, let alone discover deuterium by accident."

Although Chen Muwu's tone was very sincere, he was secretly giving Rutherford eye drops all the time.

You were the one who recommended me to come to this laboratory. Sir Dewar’s special laboratory is the center of low temperature physics research in the UK. Before Onness successfully liquefied helium, it was the coldest in the world. place.

It was mysterious when I said it, but in fact it was to save money and prevent me from doing low-temperature physics research in the Cavendish Laboratory.

Rutherford understood that his good student was expressing his protest very tactfully, so he deliberately ignored his words and continued talking about his invention.

"What did you invent and earn so much money? Do you need Cavendish Lab to help you register and apply for a patent?"

"Don't bother sir, I've sold the patent to Brennamond Corporation. This should make them a lot of money, and maybe get them out of the economic crisis, bankruptcy, acquisition or merger. "

Hearing that the patent has been sold, Rutherford began to educate him, saying that selling it directly is equivalent to killing the chicken and picking the egg, which cannot last long.

On the one hand, he really did it for the good of his students, and felt worthless for Chen Muwu who sold the patent so cheaply.

On the other hand, Rutherford was also a little jealous when he saw the David Faraday Laboratory get a grant.

If Chen Muwu's patent can be named under the Cavendish Laboratory, then the laboratory can also get [-]% of the patent fee.

If he had known that Chen Muwu could invent such a profitable thing, Rutherford would never have introduced him to Old Prague.

"Teacher, this is useless. This kind of money-making patent is not the same as the electron microscope. It is like a piece of carrion, which will definitely attract more flies to pay attention to.

"Even if this patent is held in my hands and not sold, they will definitely try every means to steal it from me, just like what they did to my country before."

I haven't seen him for a few months, and I really don't give any face to this good student. Rutherford feels that there is no way to talk today.

Fortunately, he finally finished smoking that bag of cigarettes, and finally he was able to enter the Royal Academy to have a look.

Just as Rutherford was about to lift his legs and walk in, he was stopped by Chen Muwu who pointed to the notice posted on the door: "Teacher, leave your shredded tobacco and matchbox here, you can't bring them in."

"You posted this?"

Xiao Chen nodded as a response.

Walking in the corridor, Rutherford couldn't wait to chat with Chen Muwu about heavy hydrogen.

After the discovery of the proton in 1919, Rutherford's focus in the second half of his life, in addition to managing the Cavendish Laboratory, was to find the electrically neutral particle that exists in nuclei other than hydrogen.

Throughout the 20s, the theory about electrically neutral particles was "established, overthrown and established", repeated back and forth many times, but no one could find out where the mysterious particle was.

The current mainstream theory about this neutral particle is that it is actually composed of a proton and an electron.

Protons and electrons have equal charges and opposite charges. When combined together, they can cancel each other out, so they become electrically neutral.

And because the mass of a proton is 1836 times that of an electron, the mass of this electrically neutral particle is almost the same as that of a proton.

The mass of each element and its isotope will be close to an integer multiple of the atomic mass unit (equal to one-twelfth of the atomic mass of carbon-12).

This theory was proposed by Rutherford, and it is already a very correct theory in the understanding of physicists.

From the point of view of later generations, it cannot be said that this theory is wrong, it can only be said that it is incomplete.

After all, even neutrons had not been discovered at that time, let alone a particle called a neutrino.

After reading what Chen Muwu wrote in the letter, he learned that he had discovered the existence of heavy hydrogen. Rutherford was very interested in this new hydrogen isotope.

Heavy hydrogen atoms have twice the mass of hydrogen, but have the same chemical properties as hydrogen.

This also means that compared with the hydrogen nucleus, there is one more heavy hydrogen nucleus, the kind of electrically neutral particle that everyone has been looking for.

Can you think of a way to separate this electrically neutral particle from the heavy hydrogen nucleus?
Rutherford, who started out as a gold leaf experimenter, first thought of doing miracles with great force, that is, bombardment.

So he shared his thoughts with Chen Muwu beside him.

Although this good student seems to have become a bit rebellious, there is no way to deny that he is the smartest one.

"Chen, tell me, if I bombard the heavy hydrogen nucleus you discovered with a beam of extremely fast protons, is it possible to knock out the electrically neutral particle in the heavy hydrogen nucleus?" ?Also, the name of this heavy hydrogen and heavy hydrogen nucleus is really awkward, when will you be able to name this new isotope?"

"Teacher, I basically don't know Greek, so can you help me with the naming?"

Chen Muwu passed the ball to the teacher calmly.

"Okay, then I'll help you think of a name."

Rutherford nodded in agreement, but he didn't think about it carefully. If Chen Muwu really didn't understand Greek, how did he name Photon in the first place?

"Chen, do you think my idea makes sense? If it is feasible, we will do this experiment when you return to the Cavendish Laboratory."

The teacher's eyes are full of fighting spirit.

The deuterium can be associated with the neutron in the first time, and Rutherford's academic sense is still very sensitive.

Moreover, the bombardment of deuterium nuclei with hydrogen nuclei proposed by him can indeed produce nuclear reactions.

It's just that the product obtained after the reaction is not two hydrogen nuclei plus a neutron, but helium-3.

This nuclear reaction occurs in large numbers every day, right in the sun above everyone's heads.

But Chen Muwu couldn't directly ask Rutherford, "Teacher, have you heard of the sun?" He was afraid of being beaten.

Although hydrogen nuclei plus deuterons cannot produce neutrons, the nuclear reaction between deuterons and tritons can!

Together, these two things may produce a helium nucleus, plus a high-energy neutron.

Teacher, have you heard of the hydrogen bomb?

Uh, it seems that this sentence can't be asked.

However, Chen Muwu soon discovered another problem in Rutherford's words.

He said to use a high-speed proton stream to bombard, but how can the protons be accelerated to such a high energy?
Protons and deuterium nuclei generate helium-3, and the energy of protons must reach the level of megaelectron volts.

As soon as he fell asleep, someone gave him a pillow. Just as Chen Muwu wanted to build an accelerator, the teacher delivered it to him.

"Teacher, I don't know whether the experiment you conceived can find the electrically neutral particle. However, there is a problem with the basis of this experiment.

"You said that you want to use a beam of extremely fast protons to bombard heavy hydrogen nuclei, but how can you get this beam of high-energy protons?

"Is it possible to still construct a potential difference between the two ends of the electrode like accelerating low-energy and low-energy electrons before?
"But with such a high potential difference, it is estimated that the electrodes have been broken down before the acceleration starts.

"We should think about how to accelerate protons before we think about how to bombard them with high-energy proton streams.

"Perhaps we should build an accelerator that can energize protons before attempting the experiment you propose."

"You mean, as the Swede Ising imagined?"

Rutherford is well aware of how important high-energy particles are in the study of atomic nuclei, so he has always been paying attention to this aspect.

Just last year, the world already had the first design scheme of a particle accelerator, which is to use a drift tube to add a high-frequency voltage to make a linear accelerator.

And its proposer is the Swedish physicist mentioned by Rutherford, Gustav Ising.

But this kind of idea is really realized in reality, and it will have to wait until 1928.

In that year, Norwegian engineer Rolf Wiedro created a real linear accelerator at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.

But because of weak high-frequency technology, this accelerator can only accelerate potassium ions to 50 kiloelectron volts.

Note that this is not a proton, but a potassium ion with a mass about forty times that of a proton.

Therefore, this accelerator ranked first in human history can only be regarded as a kind of verification, which has no practical significance.

"Maybe it is not the same as the acceleration mode proposed by Ising. For particle acceleration, I have some other new ideas, but I have to try it out. As you have always taught, you must It’s about putting theory into practice.”

Chen Muwu would not replicate Vidro step by step to create an accelerator that was not very successful.

As long as he does it, he must do it in one step, at least he must produce one on the order of one megaelectron volt.

After the accelerator is built, if Rutherford still wants to use it to accelerate protons to bombard deuterons to find neutrons, then let him go!
In Chen Muwu's laboratory, Rutherford saw the spectral lines emitted by deuterium atoms... a photographic negative.

Even so, he was still very happy, and praised Chen Muwu as usual, congratulating him on another new achievement.

Rutherford also proposed to announce this matter to fellow members of the Royal Society at the regular meeting of the Royal Society next week, and discuss with everyone what name should be given to this deuterium.

After reading the spectrum, Rutherford left the laboratory to chat with Old Prague.

At noon, they wanted to ask Chen Muwu to have dinner together, but the latter rejected the invitation because he wanted to guide Oppenheimer in writing a thesis.

Going to eat with two big smokers who were trapped in the Royal Research Institute all morning, Chen Muwu was afraid that he would turn into smoked human jerky.

That afternoon, Rutherford's deputy, Chadwick, the butler who arranged the Cavendish Laboratory in an orderly manner, also came to the Royal Laboratory.

The reason why he didn't come with Rutherford in the morning was because Chadwick wasn't in Cambridge at all these days, but in Liverpool, which is further north than Cambridge.

The 34-year-old Chadwick is preparing for his wedding in Liverpool these days.

As a result, a telegram from Rutherford called him to London, saying that he was going to come here to see the new discovery made by Chen Muwu.

Joining Chadwick at the David Faraday Laboratory was Kapitsa.

Kapiza felt that the groom was not in Liverpool anymore, and it seemed inappropriate for him to stay there as a best man.

And my good friend Chen Muwu has come up with a new achievement this time, so I must come to praise him!

(End of this chapter)