WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 71, 21 February 1939, Page 11

WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

THE MIGHTY ATOM, Only those who know how small it is know how mighty is the atom. The simplest- form of atom is that of hydrogen, and when one breaks down matter to single atoms one finds that each atom of hydrogen is made up of a mass of positive electricity about which swings one electron. But our atom men arc never tired of investigating still further into the ultimate constituents of matter.

Lord Rutherford’s name has been supreme among them for 20 years, and his original outline of the atomic theory as we have it this century has been little modified by the results Of further experiments. He and Ins fel-low-workers have long bombarded the atom at the Carnegie Institution of Washington ; and they, and other electrical alchemists the world over, have tried to break down the nature of the atom and reach its very innermost heart. Though atoms are so minute that millions go to make the inch the apparatus required for these experiments is impressive. The Wcstinghouse oCmpany at East Pittsburg has a gigantic apparatus which nvght be termed an atom-smashing machine. It is a great pear-shaped tank 30 feet across and 47 high. It is an electrostatic direct current reservoir with an inner atmosphere compressed to 120 pounds to tlio square inch and a 40-foot vacuum tube in which missiles (electrons and parts of electrons) are fired at a voltage of 5 000.000. In California is Professor A. E. Lawrence’s cyclotron which is capable of smashing atoms by repeated bombardment: and in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin there is an apparatus where a 3,000.000 voltage is used for experiments of this sort.—(L).