Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 336 75 Shameful Experiment

As one of the founders of physics, it is true that Newton will be respected by physicists, but there are also many jokes about this great ox.

In addition to Lord Ox losing money by trading stocks, Lord Ox suppressing his competitors, having dinner with Lord Ox and having to stand up and toast, etc., the most famous one is undoubtedly the hide-and-seek of the physicist.

It is said that a group of great physicists played hide and seek in heaven after death. The unlucky Einstein was the one who caught them. He first counted a hundred.

As soon as he opened his eyes after counting, he saw Newton not far from him.

Einstein felt that Newton might be looking down on him, or he might be afraid that he, a junior, would lose face if he got nothing in the hide-and-seek game, so he just stood there "letting you pick and choose."

"Nothing is given to you, only you are to blame." Einstein couldn't refuse the opportunity that was presented to him, so he took a few steps forward, rushed forward, and hugged Newton, who was standing there blankly: "Sir, I caught you!"

"No, no, no." Being hugged by a weird man with white hair and a white beard, Lord Niu was not angry. Instead, he pointed at his feet calmly: "It's not me you grabbed. Look at where I'm standing now." above?"

Puzzled, Einstein looked down in the direction of Newton's finger and found that under Newton's feet...

"Sir, you are standing on a one meter by one meter square floor tile."

"That's right," Newton nodded this time, "one meter times one meter, that's one square meter.

“Newton stood on an area of ​​one square meter, that’s Newton per meter squared.

"So what you caught is not Newton but Pascal. What does it have to do with me, Newton?"

Einstein, who felt that he was being played by this disrespectful physics senior, felt that his intelligence had been insulted.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became, and the angrier he became, the more he thought about it. In the end, he was so angry that he couldn't bear it anymore. He raised his leg and kicked Newton out of the one-square-meter ceramic tile.

Then Einstein roared to vent his anger and pushed Newton to the ground again: "Say, do you think you are still Pascal now? Sir, I want to remind you, you don't have a square meter under your feet now. of tiles!”

Einstein felt that he was in sight of victory, but he didn't expect Newton to be more calm and calm than he was.

He nodded to his juniors, still looking triumphant: "It's very skillful, with two moves! You're right, I am indeed not Pascal now, but Albert, you forgot another thing, That's the kick you just kicked, which just kicked me one meter away, so what you are grabbing now is still not me, Newton, but Newton-meter, which is my British descendant, Joule."

……

There are various derivative versions of this joke. For example, if you catch Volt, you will find that there is an amp under Volt, so this person is not Volt, but Volt. Each amp is equal to ohm.

Einstein was about to change his mind to say ohms, but he didn't expect that the volts that were pressing down on the amps just now hugged the amps under him tightly and said that they were not ohms now, but volts multiplied by amps equals watts.

Einstein wanted to change his name to Watt again, but Watt said that he had been standing there for several seconds, so it was no longer Watt, but Watt seconds, which became Joules.

In a more complete version, Joule suppressed Avogadro, changed from Joule to J/mol, became the unit of free energy, and also successfully made Helmholtz and Gibbs A scuffle broke out, each accusing the other of being the one.

Then in order not to lose both sides, Helmholtz and Gibbs teamed up to kick Lord Kelvin under Joule and squeeze Avogadro out at the same time.

In this way, J/mol became J/K, and from free energy to entropy, Einstein quickly took this opportunity to catch Clausius.

Also, Ampere pulled his body into a straight line, thus generating a magnetic field.

Einstein was still struggling with whether the unit of magnetic induction intensity should be Gauss or Tesla. As a result, the two men also hugged a tile, saying that they had now become magnetic flux, and asked Einstein to catch Weber.

As a result, Weber started doing push-ups again on the spot. He told Einstein that he was rising and falling, which had generated an induced electromotive force, so it looked like a volt.

Then Volta hugged Millikan and turned into Joule again. Joule pressed Hertz and became Planck. Planck found Zu Chongzhi and turned into reduced Planck. Heisenberg said that after reduction, he would not be himself. When Einstein had a problem, he went to Heisenberg.

Einstein asked where Heisenberg was, and Planck said he couldn't be sure.

The joke is a good joke, and it also tests the physics skills of those who read it. It was once widely circulated on Renren.com and has spawned various versions.

But what Chen Muwu said to Wittgenstein now is inappropriate.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to continue arguing with this philosopher, but because many of the physicists who appear in this joke have not yet entered heaven and are still living well in the world, such as Einstein, Te… Silla, Planck and Heisenberg.

The joke about the uncertainty principle at the end cannot be used, because now the principle is not named Heisenberg, but Chen.

Taking advantage of the fact that it was getting late, Chen Muwu was finally able to escape from Wittgenstein's residence.

Being able to persuade this person to go to Belgium to attend the Solvay Conference with the University of Cambridge can be regarded as solving a problem that Chen Muwu had.

If Einstein wanted to bring up the matter between quantum mechanics and causality at a meeting, Director Chen decided to ask Wittgenstein to intervene.

Instead of debating whether quantum mechanics is complete or not, and whether it conforms to causal relationships, it is better to use precious meeting time to discuss some more meaningful physics issues.

This cannot be said that he was a young man who did not respect martial ethics and attacked the 49-year-old Einstein. It can only be said that Chen Muwu did not seek to hurt others, but only wanted to protect himself.

As the temperature rises day by day, summer is approaching Cambridge University step by step.

For Chen Muwu this summer, his theme is farewell.

First, he went to London to see off the young Curies who had finished their honeymoon trip to England, and then to see off Oppenheimer, who had temporarily left him and returned to the United States to work as a professor of physics at Columbia University in New York.

Before parting ways with Oppenheimer in Cambridge, Chen Muwu once again handed him a sum of money.

Although Oppenheimer returned to China to sell stocks for Chen Muwu, there was still more than a year before the U.S. stock market crashed. If he bought some more during this period, he could still make a profit.Shi Ruwei, who also wanted to return to China, still stayed in Cambridge. This was not because he had temporarily changed his mind and did not want to leave, but because since Britain broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, he wanted to apply for a visa to the Soviet Union and purchase goods via Siberia here. Train tickets have become much more troublesome than before.

For this reason, Chen Muwu also asked Kapitsa if he had any good ideas. The answer he gave was to cross the English Channel to France - anyway, the first step by train is to return to the European continent.

However, during the time Shi Ruwei stayed in the UK, Chen Muwu helped him purchase various science and engineering textbooks available on the market, ranging from middle school to university, as well as equipment needed for various basic experiments. .

Although Chen Muwu wanted to open a school in Stockholm, after all, his power was limited, and the number of international students who could come to Europe was only a handful compared to the many domestic students of the right age.

Bringing back one more book, even if it can only make the domestic teaching materials a little more perfect, will complete its mission, and the efforts of Chen Muwu and Shi Ruwei will not be in vain.

Oppenheimer and Shi Ruwei left Cambridge, and Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft each installed particle accelerators overseas to earn extra money for the Cavendish Laboratory.

In addition, it is the summer vacation, and local students and staff in the UK have also left school or gone home to reunite with their relatives, or go to some places in China and Europe for vacation to cool off. Chen Muwu, who stayed at Cambridge University, became A loner.

He could have chosen to return to his home in London and spend more than a month's vacation with his mother and eldest brother.

But Chen Muwu chose to stay and conduct experiments on his own in the Cavendish Laboratory.

Not having any helpers around to assist him was not a difficulty for Chen Muwu, but rather an opportunity.

This isn't because he's a villain who wants to do shady and evil experiments all by himself, like in the movies and books.

But I have to say that the experiment that Chen Muwu planned to do himself is indeed a bit shameful so far.

Chadwick just gave birth to twin daughters, Joanna and Judith, earlier this year.

As soon as the summer vacation arrived, after he made arrangements for the laboratory, he took his family back to his hometown and gave Chen Muwu all the keys to every place in the laboratory.

Acting Director Chen is now the person with the highest authority in the entire Cavendish Laboratory. He can freely enter and exit any place in the laboratory, including of course the warehouse containing various experimental equipment.

Chen Muwu seemed to be shopping in a supermarket, pushing a trolley and picking and choosing from the shelves containing equipment.

He took a vacuum pump, an alpha ion source, various devices that could generate electric and magnetic fields, and a boron crystal.

Compared with metal elements such as lithium and beryllium, which are very reactive chemically, boron is much more stable as a non-metal element.

Although the experiment must be conducted in a vacuum environment to ensure that alpha particles will not be ionized in the air, the oxidation probability of lithium and beryllium will be very low.

However, the operation of processing them into target metal sheets cannot be carried out under air conditions. Compared with boron, which is more chemically stable, the latter is simpler and easier.

With so many chemicals and instruments, what exactly did Chen Muwu want to do?
Not long ago, the words of Frederic, one of the Curies, entered his heart. He planned to see if he could recreate the original time and space of Bert in the original time and space with his own strength without anyone knowing. The experiment that produced neutrons was done in 1930.

There were no particle accelerators in 1930, so the high-energy alpha particles used by Bott were definitely not accomplished in a particle accelerator, but only accelerated by the simplest electric field.

For Chen Muwu, this experiment became much simpler. He did not have to go alone to dismantle the particle accelerator standing at Cambridge University, dismantle the particle source that can produce protons, and study how to Replace it with a radioactive source that produces alpha particles.

All he had to do was to imitate Bot's experimental device and recreate it.

The so-called alpha particle source is actually just a lead box containing polonium-210.

In the experiment of bombarding gold foil with alpha particles conducted by Rutherford in the early years, the particle source used by his two students Geiger and Marston was not filled with polonium but radium.

Compared with radium, which can emit alpha, beta and gamma rays at the same time, polonium-210 can only release a large number of alpha particles and a small number of gamma particles.

Therefore, after simple screening and then passing through a collimator with a small hole, a large number of alpha particles can be obtained for experiments, which is much more convenient than the previous radium.

Of course, the most convenient one is americium, but this transuranic element has not yet been discovered. The particle accelerator that Chen Muwu built for Cambridge University that uses electrostatic high-voltage acceleration is not good. It must be a more expensive cyclotron.

What's more, if Chen Muwu can really create transuranic elements now, no matter how reluctant the Nobel Prize jury in Stockholm is, the Nobel Prize must be awarded to Chen Muwu again.

After screening out alpha particles from polonium-210, and then letting these particles pass through a velocity selector assembled by an electromagnetic field, a stream of alpha particles with the same direction and velocity can be obtained.

By bombarding these alpha particles against a target made of boron crystals, you get a stream of what Bote calls "gamma rays," but they are actually the neutrons everyone has been looking for.

Boron has two stable isotopes, namely boron-10 and boron-11. The abundance of the former in nature is 20% and the latter is 80%.

When an alpha particle bombards boron-10, it produces nitrogen-13 and a neutron.

B+α→N+n
Then nitrogen-10, which has a half-life of 13 minutes, is unstable and will decay into carbon-13 again, releasing a positron.

Ｎ→Ｃ＋β
When an alpha particle bombards boron-11, it produces a carbon-14 and a neutron.

Ｂ＋α→Ｃ＋ｎ
Carbon-14 is much more stable, with a half-life of more than 5000 years, so there is no need to consider subsequent decay reactions.

Moreover, carbon-14 has not been discovered by scientists so far. Apart from hydrogen isotopes, it is one of the few elements that can win the Nobel Prize, and it only takes two years to get it.

The 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the use of carbon-14 dating.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry the next year, 1961, was awarded for the use of carbon-14 to determine the carbon cycle in plant photosynthesis.

Both nuclear reactions will generate neutrons, so Chen Muwu does not need to distinguish how much boron-10 and boron-11 are in the boron crystal he took. Anyway, the end result is the same.

(End of this chapter)