After walking out of the venue, Rutherford lit the tobacco in his pipe, took a deep breath and asked, "Chen, have you already thought about how to do this verification experiment, but didn't say it at the meeting?"
Just like Chen Muwu could tell at a glance that Rutherford smoked outside the venue because he was not interested in drinking.
Rutherford, who had been with him for more than a year, also saw that Chen Muwu seemed to be hiding something from everyone in the meeting.
Today is already the third day of this Solvay Conference. In the past few days, whenever Rutherford wanted to smoke, he would smoke directly in his seat, regardless of the people next to him. Old men like Lorenz, and ladies like Marie Curie.
Because smoking is still very common nowadays. There is no concept of second-hand smoke, nor is it understood that smoking is a very harmful behavior to health.
But after he finished his speech, Rutherford suddenly stood up, held up his pipe and went straight to the door next to him. Chen Muwu knew that this obviously meant that he had something to say to him.
The teacher's vision was really sharp, and he could see through Chen Muwu's tricks at a glance.
So he no longer hid it, but stood upwind where he could not inhale second-hand smoke, and then directly told Rutherford the answer: "Director, yes, I have indeed thought about how to do this. Experiment to verify the existence of spin in electrons.
"And this experiment has been successfully done, but I think because everyone at the venue was thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect, no one noticed this experiment.
"I would like to repeat the experiment conducted by Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach the year before to verify the quantization of space. It should be able to verify that electrons have spin."
In 1922, Stern and Gerlach conducted an experiment in which silver atoms were released from silver metal heated in a high-temperature furnace and passed through a non-uniform magnetic field. After that, they observed discrete magnetic moments. , thus confirming the existence of space quantization.
For this, Stern also won the 1943 Nobel Prize in Physics.
However, in the reason for the award to Stern, there was no mention at all of this experiment that directly led to the introduction of the concept of electron spin.
This is because another participant in the experiment at that time, Gerlach, had become a swastika scientist. Therefore, not only was he unable to be awarded the Nobel Prize, but the experiment named after him was also deprived by the Nobel Prize jury. Eligibility to appear in award rationale.
There is also an anecdote about their discovery of discrete magnetic moments, that is, at first, Gerlach did not observe silver atoms on the condensed glass disk.
This is because silver, as a white metal, does not appear very clearly on the screen glass.
But when Gerlach handed the glass plate to Stern, traces of silver atoms suddenly appeared on it.
Because of the sharp depreciation of the German mark, Stern could not afford to smoke high-quality cigars and could only smoke low-quality cigars containing sulfur.
When the sulfur in the smoke met silver, black silver sulfide was generated, which allowed the experimental results to appear.
Thanks to poverty, this experiment could be successful. If de Broglie had been used to conduct this experiment, it would be difficult to obtain correct experimental results.
When he mentioned the Stern-Gerlach experiment, Rutherford immediately understood what Chen Muwu meant.
It's just that he doesn't understand that since this experiment has been done a long time ago, what is Chen Muwu still hiding in his speech?
After listening to the teacher's question, Chen Muwu smiled and said, "Director, although silver atoms only have one outermost electron, it is still a bit unconvincing.
"So I plan to change the experimental material and use ground-state hydrogen atoms to replace silver atoms. Because the electrons in the ground-state hydrogen atoms do not have orbital angular momentum, if the same results as in the Stern-Gerlach experiment still occur, , then it can be explained that there must be other magnetic moments in the electron, and the magnetic moment is the angular momentum, that is, the spin of the electron.
"I want to use this experiment as my graduation thesis. What do you think this time?"
Ever since Rutherford rejected his proposal to use the exclusion principle for his graduation thesis, Chen Muwu has been thinking about what to use as a replacement.
Although he had thought of two options before, he always felt that they were more or less inappropriate.
Then when he was writing the outline of electron spin these days, he naturally thought of this experiment. If he made it and wrote it into a paper, it would be the most appropriate one so far.
Sure enough, after listening to Chen Muwu's idea, Rutherford's eyes lit up: "Okay, okay, let's do this experiment and write this paper! As soon as the Solvay Conference is over, we will return to the Cavendish Laboratory , I will ask Kapitsa to make arrangements for you immediately."
Kapitsa has been the assistant head of the Magnetism Department for a year. Chen Muwu's experiment will use magnetic fields, so he is the right professional counterpart.
"Director," Chen Muwu recalled what Langevin said to him on the first day. "After the meeting, I would like to take a few days off and go to Germany from Belgium to visit Professor Planck and Dr. Einstein." . When I was able to publish my first paper, these two seniors also helped me a lot."
Without thinking, Rutherford rejected Chen Muwu's verbal request for leave: "I don't have time! I want to meet them. There will be more opportunities in the future. However, if you don't do this experiment quickly, someone else may take advantage of it."
"After all, many people in the venue today have heard your idea. Although they may not react for a while now, when they go back, as long as one of them also thinks of your idea, and If you do the experiment first, then all your efforts will be in vain."
He spoke very excitedly, probably thinking of the time more than 20 years ago when his paper was published first by the Curies and Becquerel.
Chen Muwu knew that Rutherford was not arbitrary, but patiently reasoned with himself.
From this point of view, the plan for this trip to Germany must have been ruined.
I don’t know when the next meeting with Planck and Einstein of Germany will be?
It can’t be the next Solvay Conference in three years, right?
Following Rutherford into the meeting again, Chen Muwu returned to his seat and wrote a letter to Einstein, telling him that he had originally planned to visit Berlin, but had to rush back to Cavendish due to an unexpected incident. Xu is doing experiments in the laboratory and can only wait until we meet again next time.
Chen Muwu planned to give this rare handwritten letter without a typewriter to Langevin and ask him to forward it to Einstein on his behalf.
…
After reading the paper at the conference, Chen Muwu felt that he had completed all the tasks set for this trip.
He simply skipped the entire meeting on the fourth day and planned to take a sightseeing tour of Brussels, the capital of Belgium.
After all, you can’t come here in vain, right?
Of course, Chen Muwu rushed back to the Solvay International Institute of Physics and Chemistry building before dark that night.
Because a sumptuous dinner will be held here tonight, which is regarded as a practical banquet held in advance for all physicists.
After all, this session will end tomorrow morning. If there is another practice banquet that night, it is estimated that many people will have already embarked on the return journey.
When Chen Muwu rushed to the building, the banquet had already begun.
Belgians are not as old-fashioned as the Trinity College dinner. Everyone in the banquet hall is not there to eat, but more to socialize and chat with colleagues.
There was a piano in the corner of the stage, and a girl was sitting on the piano stool, playing beautiful melodies for the banquet.
Teacher Rutherford's place was still very lively, with many people gathering around and chatting.
Chen Muwu picked up some food and walked to Blackett and De Broglie again.
After taking the photos tomorrow, everyone will part ways. Blackett will go to Germany with Master Langevin - de Broglie, who loves to join in the fun, will certainly not miss the opportunity to meet Einstein; and Chen Muwu will still follow Rutherford Return to Cambridge.
Schrödinger also took this opportunity to chat with Chen Muwu while holding a wine glass.
After hearing the greeting in German-sounding English, Chen Muwu simply started talking to him directly in German.
Schrödinger got right to the point, directly praising the correctness of Chen Muwu's electron wave theory and congratulating him on experimentally verifying this theory.
Xiao Chen then remembered that since Schrödinger saw de Broglie's paper, he had been wondering if matter could be a wave, so he could find a wave equation for this wave.
Moreover, when his wave equation was developed, the electron diffraction experiment had not yet been successful.
Now that I have figured out the matter wave theory more than half a year ahead of the original time and space, will it also lead to the advent of the Schrödinger equation in advance?
This is really a series of links. When I return to the Cavendish Laboratory and complete the experiment to verify the electron spin, it seems that I will publish a paper on the wave equation.
How did Li Zongsheng sing that song? It’s really “hard work running around all day long and never having a moment to spare”!
After chatting with Schrödinger for a while, Chen Muwu finally held back and did not abruptly ask him whether he liked cats.
…
The next day, Chen Muwu slept in, squeezed out time, and didn't arrive outside the research institute's gate until nine o'clock.
In front of the institute, on a lawn in Leopold Park, a row of chairs with backrests had been set up for the group photo.
At Chen Muwu's level, he didn't even dare to expect to sit on the chair.
He consciously looked like he had taken photos at the Cavendish Laboratory last fall, and then consciously found Blackett, who was also wandering in the last row, the two tallest people in the room, and stood together again.
Chen Muwu, who was standing in the center of the back row, felt that he had the aura to see all the small mountains at a glance.
His eyes swept over the big guys in the front row, and then he discovered something a little ridiculous.
"Smart heads don't grow hair." Although the sunshine at ninety o'clock in the morning is not very strong, the bare skulls in front of us reflect the sunlight and shine brightly.
The shutter of the camera placed on the center stand opposite made a mechanical sound, and Chen Muwu's expression was frozen on the film, with a full smile.
After the group photo was taken, the photographer also provided separate photo services. He wanted to make extra money with this business.
Because the price of taking a photo is not cheap, Chen Muwu only selected a few people he thought were older and took photos together.
People like Langevin who lived until after World War II were not at all among his considerations.
Just when Chen Muwu felt that the photo was about the same and was about to leave with Rutherford, the brown-haired girl who played the piano at the practice banquet yesterday jumped up to him and said a few words to him openly. talk.
Chen Muwu only understood the first sentence "Bonjour", confirming that the girl was speaking French, but he didn't understand any of the remaining sentences.
De Broglie, who happened to be standing next to him, translated to him with a smile on his face: "She said she wanted to take a picture with you."
The girl probably saw that Chen Muwu didn't understand, and pointed to the camera in front of the lawn.
(End of chapter)
