NEW POWER FOUND

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXVIII, Issue 121, 17 May 1932, Page 8

NEW POWER FOUND

SCIENCE CAN TAP ATOM LAW OF CONSERVATION BROKEN “For the first time in history we have got more energy out of something than we have put into it.” Sir Leonard E. Hill, director of research at the London Light and Electric Clinic, expressed this opinion when commenting on- the successful experiments in splitting the atom made by Dr. Cockroft and Dr. Walton at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. “Every schoolboy,” he said, “learns from the law of conservation of energy that we cannot ‘make’ energy. “This law may now be considered as broken. Dr. Cockroft’s discovery is the beginning of something far bigger and more important than the layman might imagine.” LORD RUTHERFORD’S VIEWS “A discovery of great scientific importance was how Lord Rutherford described the splitting of the atom, as a result of experiments of Dr. Cockroft and Walton. The doctors have been working for years "with a special apparatus installed, under Lord Rutherford’s direction, at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.

Lord Rutherford said dt was difficult to say where the discovery would lead. Experiments hitherto had yielded nothing of immediate commercial value. There was a supposition that the splitting of the atom would enable an immense accumulation of electrical energy, but, so far, every additional particle of energy obtained has required millions of particles to make it effective. However, the experiments were likely greatly to extend knowledge of the atom.