EXPERIMENTS WITH ATOMS.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20587, 1 July 1932, Page 17

EXPERIMENTS WITH ATOMS.

A GREAT SUCCESS. i ' ■ . LORD RUTHERFORD EXPLAINS. (raoii owr coxsESPONEEirr.) LONDON, May 27. Two young scientists, Dr. EJ T. Walton and Dr. J. D. Cockrolt, working übder Lord 'Rutherford at' Cambridge, have succeeded in splitting the -atom, and have obtained more energy out of something than they have put. into it. This has been done by ;a bombardment by high voltage electricity. Lord Rutherford lias described the results of the experiments as "a discovery of great scientific importances" The two scientists have been working on special apparatus erected at the laboratory under the direction of Lord Rutherford, and they are now describod as having succeeded in "splitting" the atom. It was difficult yet; said Lord Rutherford, to say to what the discovery might lead. .Up to the present , the experiments had not yielded anyI thing' which would be of immediate commercial value. He had seen it stated that the discovery meant that we should be able to produce in immense accumulation of added electrical energy for commercial purposoa. But they could not. claim that for ■their experiments up to the present, for the simple reason that for every' particle of additional energy they got it required millions of particles to make ij; effective. The experiments, however, Were of great scientific interest, and were likely to be power-

fill agents in txtending our knowlcdsjo > of the atom. The experimenters used voltages ct between 120,000 and to send . millions of particles a second 1 through a vacuum tube at a speed of 10,000 , Kilometres —or about 6250 miles—-a second. It was found tba't the bardment of different elements by tbo particles split the light elements and transformed -matter. ' For every atom split, several ■ millions of particles were, required,.. • Atoms of hydrogen have been turned' into helium. ■ - L ' "We concentrated fin an atom hydrogen,'' 1 Dr. Goekroft said: "We were , prepared to work on voltages " ranging from. 100,000 to 50,0,000 We found that at 120,000' volts s6ht«> of the atoms- we were bombarding began to break up into helium. Those helium atoms came out with energies of the order of 100 to 100 times that of she .particles we were firing int<» them. 1 . ' ' "In one sense it is true that by tins means we ware turning 120,000 volts into 190,000 volts. But only" one particle breaks up for every 10,600,000 we use to bombard it. We are pn>dueing from theee atoms 100 to 160 times of the known energy, ibut only once, in 10,000,000 times. Therefore,. it would only be strictly true to say we were turning 100,000 rolts into 160,000 volts if every atom 'broke Up/' - . * - I>r. Cockroft -said "that although 1 Hhe -- discovery was of immense scientific iwi- ■ p'ortance, it was not of immediate practical value. "All I can say is that if an economic process is developed 1 believei it will be along the lines- 'if this research. Wehavc only got thf.-e results in the last fortnight after ncarlv three years' work'. Hudi l , mori tecSy.' be done. We now know at any rate that we are on the right path." ProfessoT E. N; dal Andradc (Quain Professor of Physics in the University of London) thus explains the experiments: The hydrogen particles are discharged in a vacuum tube, and th« result is observed on a phosphorescent screen, on which the appearance oft little scintillations indicates jho destruction of atoms. It may be compared with a sort: of blind air rai-!. in which bombs are dropped all over , the country in the hope that an occasional bomb will hit an. arsenal and blow it up. In the Experiment »t Cambridge only one bomb in 100,000,000 succeeded. ( ■