Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 205 153 A Song of Loyalty
Although he hadn't written a word yet, Chen Muwu still told Kapiza, who was looking unhappy at this time, about recommending Kapiza to the old Prague to be the director of the Mond Laboratory.

He is not drawing a big pie, because it will take a long time for the Mond Lab to be completed, so it doesn't matter whether this big pie can really be realized in the future.

Chen Muwu really felt that even though he did not recommend it to Old Prague, Kapitsa still had a good chance of becoming the director of this laboratory.

Although the Mond Laboratory was separated from the David Faraday Laboratory of the Royal Research Institute, the prefix in front of him is the Royal Society.

After the Mond Laboratory is completed, Rutherford is already the president of the Royal Society, and he will definitely have a lot of say in the selection of the director of the laboratory.

It can't be said to be nepotism, but no one wants to hand over such a very important laboratory to someone who doesn't know the basics.

Old Prague didn't have any good candidates. The only one with laboratory management talent and experience was his son Little Prague—but he didn't want to call Little Prague to his side.

If Old Prague can't find it, he will definitely ask Rutherford for help. After all, as Chen Muwu told him before, the Cavendish Laboratory is the best physics laboratory in the UK, and the reserve of physics talents in it is also top notch.

By Rutherford's side, Chen Muwu had clearly rejected Old Prague's request to stay. As the chief steward of the Cavendish Laboratory, Rutherford would not let Chadwick go.

Then, apart from the two of them, among the students and staff in the laboratory, the third most intelligent and capable person can only be Kapitsa.

If a new experimental genius hadn’t been born in the British physics community during the period before the Mond Laboratory was built, Chen Muwu felt that Kapica’s appointment as the director should be a matter of close proximity. .

After listening to Chen Muwu's incomparably candid words, Kapiza felt that he had somewhat treated the heart of a gentleman with the heart of a villain just now.

With such a good opportunity, Chen Muwu can still think about himself. If this is not considered a friend, then what is a friend?

And the idea that I thought of before, I didn't tell Chen Muwu in advance.

He was able to think of it before himself, and finally realized it in the experiment. It cannot be said that Chen Muwu plagiarized his academic achievements, it can only mean that he is smarter than himself.

Kapitsa didn't think there was anything wrong with his final conclusion.

The newspaper said that Chen Muwu was smarter than Einstein, let alone himself!

However, why did Chen Muwu not accept the position of Director of the Mond Laboratory, but recommend him instead?
Kapitsa couldn't understand this question, and finally asked it with a very euphemistic question: "Chen, I have been studying magnetism in the Cavendish Laboratory, and I have no experience in low-temperature physics." No, and you are not a genius like you, and you can achieve results in new fields in a short period of time, so how can you get the position of director of the Mond Laboratory?"

Chen Muwu thought, buddy, this is helping you.

The Mond Laboratory, which studies low-temperature physics, has already started construction ahead of schedule. If Kapiza can also switch from magnetism to low-temperature physics earlier, maybe before he leaves the UK and stays in Sulian, he will discover liquid Superfluidity of helium at low temperatures.

In this way, Kapitsa might be able to win the Nobel Prize in Physics before the war started, instead of waiting for him to return to Sulian, because of various ideological problems, he would be awarded the Nobel Prize by those members of the Nobel Prize jury. drag on for decades.

This time, Chen Muwu didn't plan to intervene in the matter of Kapiza being left in Sulian during the family-visiting holiday like Rutherford did.

After all, the two of them did not, as the newspaper said, that the Su Lian government suppressed scientists for no reason to prevent them from going abroad, but that the concubine had the intention of the Lang's affection.

The Soviet Union government hoped that he could stay and help improve the physics level of the motherland, and Kapitsa was willing to do so.

Moreover, Kapica's staying in Sulian can be regarded as beneficial and harmless to Chen Muwu.

In the future, no matter whether it is to return to China by land by train or because of other things, he will never get around this country.

In the upper echelons of Sulian's scientific community, it is still necessary to have someone who can speak up.

Chen Muwu didn't want to wait until he went to Sulian to receive his colleagues in the scientific community, not his good friend Kapitsa, but the Lysenko who "made the Chinese wear long johns" in the famous fishing post.

After talking about the director of the Mond Laboratory, Kapitsa still couldn't help asking Chen Muwu how he transferred from deuterium to superconducting magnetic properties.

So Chen Muwu told him vividly again, how he accidentally discovered the phenomenon of niobium flakes floating in front of Wells and Huxley some time ago.

"Chen, did you put the niobium and the magnet together on purpose, or by accident?"

"It was intentional... No, of course it was accidentally put in!"

Chen Muwu felt that Kapiza lacked a pair of glasses on his nose, and the expression on his face was not enough to grit his teeth. The question he asked did not have that taste.

However, due to inertial thinking, he almost gave the wrong answer.

"It seems that you are not only a genius, but you are also very lucky. A mistake can discover a new phenomenon. I have been discussing with Cockcroft for a long time, and I plan to do this experiment to study it. Thinking that you have already done the experiment before you have taken any concrete action."

"Who? Who do you mean? Cockcroft?"

"That's right, do you know John? He married James this summer. After getting married, he was sent by the old crocodile to be my assistant."

During the casual conversation with Kapitsa, Chen Muwu heard an unexpected name, John Cockcroft.

Has this person arrived at Cavendish Laboratory by now?

If it is not counted that the linear accelerator built by Widerrow can only be regarded as a verification but has no practical effect, then Cockcroft is the No. 1 particle accelerator that can be used in the laboratory.

It was said that Rutherford gritted his teeth and allocated a thousand pounds to study the particle accelerator. The whereabouts of this huge sum of money was Cockcroft's research team.

And from Cavendish Laboratory to Mond Laboratory, Cockcroft has also served as Kapitza's assistant.

After Kapica returned to Sulian, it was he who succeeded as the director of Mond Laboratory.

Cockcroft is an alumnus of Dirac. He graduated from St. John's College, Cambridge University last summer, and then entered the Cavendish Laboratory as a graduate student.

But at the same time, Chen Muwu first prepared for the competition and participated in the Paris Olympics. Not long after he returned to Cambridge, he went north to Denmark, stayed with Bohr for a few months, and won a Nobel Prize from Sweden by the way.

Then at the beginning of this year, he was sent by Rutherford to the David Faraday Laboratory in Old Prague, London, and he has not returned to the Cavendish Laboratory until now.

So Chen Muwu didn't know much about the personnel changes in the laboratory in the past year, and there were quite a few graduate students every year. He didn't have the time or need to get to know them one by one. He didn't know that Cockcroft had It is also normal to enter the Cavendish Laboratory.

However, now that he knew that Cockcroft was in the laboratory, he had no choice but to take him under his command.

Not to mention his theoretical level, Cockcroft's hands-on ability will definitely not be bad if he can just rub out a particle accelerator with his bare hands. It is Chen Muwu's current talent.

But this person can't ask Kapitsa now, he should find an opportunity later and talk to teacher Rutherford.

Kapitsa lingered in the office for a long time, and told Chen Muwu in detail about all the big and small things that happened in the Cavendish laboratory during his absence.

This made Chen Muwu's desire to start scientific research on the first day back in the laboratory wasted. He had to wait until tomorrow to make the miniature particle accelerator model he promised to provide to Rutherford.

Early accelerators were divided into three genres, two of which were high-pressure accelerators, and the other was cyclotrons.

The cyclotron was directly screened out by Chen Muwu, because it was too expensive to build. Even if Chen Muwu could build a model the size of a matchbox, Rutherford would definitely not pay to make it a reality. Among them.

In 1936, the year before Rutherford's death, Cavendish Laboratory also began to discuss whether a more advanced and higher energy cyclotron should be built at Cambridge University.

But this proposal was directly rejected by Rutherford because there was no money.

In the end, it was Baron Austin's donation that allowed the project to go on smoothly.

Baron Austin, formerly known as Herbert Austin, is a well-known British business owner.

He, like Henry Ford in the United States, produces cars with his surname as the brand name.

Lord Austin donated 36 pounds to the Cavendish Laboratory for this 910-inch cyclotron, which is about 25 mm!
Rutherford generously provided Chen Muwu with [-] pounds for the particle accelerator today, which was a full one-hundredth of Baron Austin's large donation.

The current annual funding of the Cavendish Laboratory is less than 1 pounds. Even if you don’t spend a penny from January 1 next year and save all the money, you won’t be able to save it until 1936, ten years later. Here comes £25.

Since it is impossible to build a cyclotron, it can only choose from the remaining two DC high-voltage accelerators.

The so-called high-voltage accelerator is to generate high voltage first. With high voltage, there will be a potential difference U. Let the charged particle e pass through this huge potential difference, ΔE=eU, and it will be able to carry a huge amount of energy.

The key to making this kind of particle accelerator is how to generate high pressure.

Cockcroft suggested a way. He designed a DC circuit using capacitors and diodes. After the low voltage passed through this circuit, it would be multiplied, and finally reached the high voltage needed to accelerate the particles.

However, Robert van de Graaff of the United States has given another way to create high voltage, which is to use static electricity.

The machine he developed to produce high-voltage static electricity is called a Van de Graaff generator.

This kind of generator can not only provide high voltage to accelerate particles, but because of its low cost, it is often used in science popularization to demonstrate the power of static electricity.

If you go into any municipal science and technology museum for elementary and middle school students, there will always be a metal ball inside that can make your hair explode when you touch it. That ball is also a small Van de Graaff generator.

In contrast, Van de Graaff's electrostatic accelerator is cheaper than Cockcroft's DC accelerator, has a simpler structure, and has better stability and higher voltage.

Chen Muwu intends to make a model to lobby for the particle accelerator Rutherford built at Cambridge University, which is exactly this kind.

It's just that he asked Cockcroft to help him develop a Van de Graaff-style particle accelerator. Can this also be regarded as a kind of NTR?

Speaking of which, apart from Cockcroft, Chen Muwu's Chinese compatriot Zhao Zhongyao also has a lot of connections with the Van de Graaff electrostatic accelerator.

In 1955, he built the first 70 electron volt electrostatic accelerator.

Most of the components in this accelerator were purchased by Zhao Zhongyao from the High Voltage Engineering Company (HVEC) in the United States after he visited the Bikini Island atomic bomb test in 1946.

The company was co-founded by Van de Graaff and others to produce electrostatic accelerators.

But it was not van der Graaf who sold the accelerator components to Zhao Zhongyao, but one of his partners, John George Tramp.

At that time, a complete electrostatic accelerator was quoted by HVEC at least 40 US dollars.

And the most that Zhao Zhongyao can get for the purchase is only [-] US dollars.

With such a huge disparity in money, he shouldn't have been able to buy an accelerator.

But Lao Qu, who became more and more sympathetic with Zhao Zhongyao in getting along, thought of a good way.

He sold an accelerator that was about to be retired and sent to a scrap factory for destruction to Zhao Zhongyao at the scrap price.

Although Lao Qu's family is far away in the United States on the other side of the ocean, there have been two patriots (not) in two generations. This is really a hymn of loyalty!

There is such a layer of connection between Zhao Zhongyao and the electrostatic accelerator. This time, Chen Muwu brought Cockcroft along to develop the particle accelerator, so he cannot be missing.

After confirming the candidate for the helper, Chen Muwu finally started to make the model of this electrostatic accelerator.

This model is very simple to make. The raw materials he asked Oppenheimer to prepare for himself are only a metal tin can, a small motor and a well-insulated ribbon.

Oppenheimer paid for these things himself, and it was not easy for him to ask Chen Muwu for reimbursement.

For these three things together did not cost him five shillings.

What does the teacher want these cheap things for?
(End of this chapter)