Abstract
LOUD RUTHERFORD, in his Ludwig Mond lecture at the University of Manchester on December 10, described how recent work in the study of artificial nuclear transmutations is giving rise to a new chemistry, concerned not with the outer layers of the atom but with the nucleus itself. The transmutations of one element into another involves adding or subtracting a particle, charged or uncharged, to or from the nucleus, and this may be effected in many cases by bombardment with foreign particles. A few of these particles may enter the nucleus, and this may sometimes lead to the emission of a particle from the nucleus itself. The first of such transmutations was accomplished in 1919, when nitrogen was disintegrated by a-particle bombardment with the liberation of fast protons. More recently, a new type of disintegration has been discovered in which a neutron is emitted. In these cases the residual nucleus in the transformations is stable. In the cases investigated by M. and Mme. Curie-Joliot, an artificial radioactive element is formed by bombarding a light element with a-particles. Fermi and his collaborators have found that a very large number of elements can be disintegrated by neutron bombardment, giving artificial radioactive elements. The neutron, on account of its lack of charge, can penetrate the heavy nuclei when a-particles would be turned back. Finally, Lord Rutherford directed attention to the accomplished production of nuclear disintegration, using bombarding particles artificially accelerated by high voltages instead of the particles emitted from natural radio-elements.
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Artificial Nuclear Transmutations. Nature 134, 964–965 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134964b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134964b0