Splitting the Atom
During the 1930's, another women, Lise Meitner, would contribute
new insights into what would happen when an atom was actually split into
two. It came that she was spending a winter holiday in Sweden when she
thought of an idea from recent results. Meitner wondered whether in some
atoms like uranium the forces that hold the nucleus together might be more
feebly balanced. If a 'slow' neutron enters the nucleus, it might cause
the nucleus to elongate and vibrate causing the particles within to be
pulled far enough that it might split. Meitner named this process Nuclear
Fission. She realized that their must be energy released when fission
occurs and used Einstein's equation, E=MC^2 (energy equals mass times the
speed of light squared) to get the answer. The result produced 200MeV(million
electron volts), just the amount of energy that could force the two fragments
of the nucleus apart.
After discussing this new discovery with other scientists they found
a new exciting possibility where the fission reaction could cause new neutrons
from the split nucleus to fly out and further splitting other atoms resulting
in a chain reaction and if controlled could be an efficient new power source
- but if not controlled could result in a huge explosion. What made this
frightening was the fact that World War II was only about a year away.
The physicists Niels Bohr, who mapped the atom, brought these
results of the fission research to the United States. One of the physicists
believed that the United States did not yet realize what was at stake and
told Albert Einstein to write to the president. The government was
slow to react at first but then were persuaded that they were in a race
with other countries such as, Germany and Russia, to develop nuclear energy
and weapons.
| 
home
