FIRING AT ATOMS

Patea Mail, Volume XLVI, 27 August 1923, Page 3

FIRING AT ATOMS

AT 10,000 MIKES A SECOND

In an effort to break up the atom, Sir Ernest Kutherford, in his laboratory at Cambridge, is firing particles of helium at a speed of 10,000 miles a second. At the Eoyal Institution in London ho demonstrated the enormous speeds attained by electrons and atoms in the vacuum tube. The invisible particles of matter, he explained, acquired velocities many thousand times greater than the swiftest bullet, and these velocities endowed them w ith tremendous energy. At subsequent lectures, Sir Ernest will tell what he has so far achieved with his ‘ ‘ atomic bullets'' towards breaking up certain atoms, and in a sense transmuting the elements. An atom is so small that if a tiny hole were made in the side of an evacuated electric light bulb, so that molecules of air could pass in at the rate of a million a second, it would take a hundred million years before the bulb was full, and there are two atoms in each molecule of air.