On the third day after the letter to Rutherford was sent, the old man rushed to London from Cambridge University early in the morning.
Before he met Chen Muwu, and as soon as he arrived at the Royal Institution at 21 Albemarle Street, Rutherford was insulted by his own precious student.
In order to catch the first train to London today, he got up early and went through a bumpy journey for several hours. Rutherford, who had just gotten off the bus, planned to take out his pipe, hold a bag of cigarettes and walk into the institute. building to cheer up my tired spirit.
As a result, outside the gate of the Royal Institute, he saw a no-smoking notice posted here.
This made Rutherford very strange. Wasn't Old Bragg also a smoker? How could he establish such a strange rule in the Royal Research Institute that he managed: "Injury to the enemy by one thousand, damage to oneself by eight hundred"?
But this is someone else's territory after all, and Rutherford, who came from afar, had no choice but to be hospitable and do as he pleased.
It's better to stand outside the door and smoke this bag of cigarettes before going in.
Chen Muwu, who felt relaxed after completing the experiment, arrived later than Rutherford today.
He threw the first draft of his paper on the discovery of deuterium to Oppenheimer.
Although he has little patience for experiments, writing the first draft of a paper is not a problem.
What's more, Oppenheimer is now in the mood to produce the first research result in his life. Let alone let him write a paper, let him go to the busiest street in London and shout in front of the people coming and going. "All eyes are on me, I am announcing something:..." I guess Oppenheimer would not refuse. He might even feel unsatisfied after shouting, so he would take off his clothes and run naked on the street. .
As soon as Chen Muwu stepped out of the embassy car assigned to him by Zhu Zhaoxin for private use, he saw a familiar tall figure standing outside the gate, puffing away smoke.
"Teacher! Teacher!"
After making organic glass, deuterium was discovered non-stop. Chen Muwu, who had been soaking in David Faraday's laboratory and had never been back to Cambridge University, had not seen Rutherford for a long time.
"Chen, long time no see! After I received the letter you wrote a few days ago, I wanted to come over and see this new thing you found with my own eyes."
After several months of separation, Chen Muwu felt a little uncomfortable hearing the long-lost loud voice again.
After being forcibly hugged by Rutherford, he observed calmly and stood upwind, continuing to chat with the teacher.
"I heard that you helped old Henry make a lot of money with a new invention, enough for him to rebuild his laboratory?"
“Teacher, it can’t be said that I am helping Lord Prague make money, but that I am helping myself.
"This historic Davy-Faraday Laboratory cannot live up to its reputation. The experimental equipment inside is very old and cannot support the low-temperature physics experiments that I have always wanted to do.
"If I hadn't had such a sum of money to solve my urgent need, I probably wouldn't have been able to conduct experiments until now, let alone discover deuterium by accident."
Although Chen Muwu's tone was very sincere, he kept giving Rutherford eye drops in secret.
It was you who recommended me to this laboratory in the first place. Sir Dewar's special laboratory here is the center of low-temperature physics research in the UK. Before Onness successfully liquefied helium, it was once the coldest in the world. place.
It sounds mysterious when I say it, but in fact it is just to save money and not allow me to do research on low-temperature physics in the Cavendish Laboratory.
Rutherford understood that his good student was protesting tactfully, so he deliberately refused to answer his words and continued to talk about the invention.
"What did you invent that actually made so much money? Do you need the Cavendish Laboratory to help you register and apply for a patent?"
"Don't bother teacher, I have sold the patent to Brennamond Company. This should allow them to make a lot of money. It may allow them to get out of the economic crisis and avoid bankruptcy, acquisition or merger. "
When he heard that the patent had been sold, Rutherford began to educate him, saying that selling it directly was equivalent to killing the goose to retrieve the egg.
On the one hand, he did do it for the good of his students and felt unworthy of Chen Muwu who sold the patent so cheaply.
On the other hand, Rutherford was a little jealous when he saw that David Faraday's laboratory had received a grant.
If Chen Muwu's patent can be named under the Cavendish Laboratory, then the laboratory can also get 20% of the patent fee.
If he had known that Chen Muwu could invent such a profitable thing, Rutherford would have never introduced him to Old Prague.
"Teacher, this is of no use. This money-making patent is different from the electron microscope. It is like a piece of rotten meat and will definitely attract more flies to pay attention.
"Even if I hold on to this patent and don't sell it, they will definitely try every means to steal the patent from me, just like they did to my country before."
After not seeing each other for several months, Rutherford felt that there was no way for him to talk today.
Fortunately, he finally finished smoking the bag of cigarettes and could finally enter the Royal Academy to take a look.
Just as Rutherford was about to lift his legs and walk in, he was stopped by Chen Muwu who pointed at the notice posted on the door: "Teacher, leave your tobacco and matchbox here, you can't take them inside."
"You posted this?"
Xiao Chen nodded in response.
Walking in the corridor, Rutherford began to chat with Chen Muwu eagerly about the issue of heavy hydrogen.
After discovering the proton in 1919, Rutherford's focus in the second half of his life, in addition to managing the Cavendish Laboratory, was to search for the electrically neutral particle that exists in the nuclei of other atoms except hydrogen.
Throughout the 1920s, the theory about electrically neutral particles was "established, overthrown, and established again" and was repeated many times, but no one found out where the mysterious particle was.
The current mainstream theory about this electrically neutral particle is that it is actually composed of a proton and an electron.
Protons and electrons have equal and opposite charges. When combined together, they cancel each other out and become electrically neutral.
And because the mass of a proton is 1836 times that of an electron, the mass of this electrically neutral particle is almost the same as that of a proton.
The mass of each element and its isotopes will be close to an integer multiple of the atomic mass unit (equal to one-twelfth of the atomic mass of carbon-12).
This theory was proposed by Rutherford, and it is already a very correct theory among physicists today.
From the perspective of later generations, it cannot be said that this theory is wrong, it can only be said that it is incomplete.
After all, even the neutron had not been discovered at that time, let alone a particle called a neutrino.
After reading what Chen Muwu wrote in his letter, he learned that he had discovered the existence of heavy hydrogen. Rutherford was very interested in this new hydrogen isotope.
Heavy hydrogen atoms are twice as massive as hydrogen but have the same chemical properties as hydrogen.
This also means that compared with the hydrogen nucleus, there is an extra electrically neutral particle in the heavy hydrogen nucleus, which is the kind of electrically neutral particle that everyone has been looking for.
Can you think of a way to separate this electrically neutral particle from the heavy hydrogen nucleus?
Rutherford, who started out by doing gold foil experiments, first thought of using force to create miracles, that is, bombardment.
So he expressed his thoughts to Chen Muwu beside him.
Although this good student seems to have become a bit rebellious, there is no denying that he is the smartest one.
"Chen, tell me, if I use a beam of extremely fast protons to bombard the heavy hydrogen nucleus you discovered, is it possible to knock out the electrically neutral particle in the heavy hydrogen nucleus? ?Also, the names of heavy hydrogen and heavy hydrogen nuclei are really awkward. When can you give this new isotope a name?"
"Teacher, I basically don't know Greek, so can you help me with the naming?"
Chen Muwu calmly passed the ball to the teacher.
"Okay, then I'll help you think of a name."
Rutherford nodded in agreement, but he didn't think carefully about it. If Chen Muwu really didn't understand Greek, how could he name the photon as Photon in the first place?
"Chen, do you think my idea makes sense? If it is feasible, we will do this experiment when you return to the Cavendish Laboratory."
The teacher's eyes were full of fighting spirit.
He could immediately associate the deuteron with the neutron inside. Rutherford's academic sense of smell was still very sensitive.
And the bombardment of deuterons with hydrogen nuclei that he proposed can indeed produce nuclear reactions.
It's just that the product obtained after the reaction is not two hydrogen nuclei plus a neutron, but helium-3.
This nuclear reaction is happening in large numbers every day, right in the sun above our heads.
But Chen Muwu couldn't directly ask Rutherford, "Teacher, have you heard of the sun?" He was afraid of getting beaten.
Although hydrogen nuclei and deuterons cannot produce neutrons, the nuclear reaction between deuterons and tritium nuclei can!
Putting these two things together may produce a helium nucleus plus a high-energy neutron.
Teacher, have you heard of the hydrogen bomb?
Well, it seems that I can’t ask this question.
However, Chen Muwu soon discovered another problem in Rutherford's words.
He said to use high-speed proton flow to bombard, but how can we accelerate the protons to such a high energy?
Protons and deuterons produce helium-3, and the energy of protons must reach the megaelectronvolt level.
Someone would bring him a pillow as soon as he fell asleep. As soon as Chen Muwu wanted to build an accelerator, the teacher brought him to his door.
"Teacher, I don't think it's very good whether the electrically neutral particle can be found in the experiment you envisioned. However, there is a problem with the foundation of this experiment.
"You said that you want to bombard heavy hydrogen nuclei with a beam of extremely fast protons, but how can you get this beam of high-energy protons?
“Is it possible that a potential difference is still created between the two ends of the electrode just like the low-energy low-energy electrons were accelerated before?
“But with such a high potential difference, it is estimated that the electrodes have already been broken down before acceleration begins.
"Before we think about how to bombard with high-energy proton streams, we should first think about how to accelerate protons.
"Perhaps before we try the experiment you propose, we should build an accelerator that can energize protons."
"You mean, as the Swede Ising imagined?"
Rutherford knew very well how important high-energy particles were in the study of atomic nuclei, so he had been paying attention to this aspect.
Just last year, the world's first design plan for a particle accelerator was developed, which was to use a drift tube and high-frequency voltage to create a linear accelerator.
The proposer was the Swedish physicist mentioned by Rutherford, Gustav Ising.
But it would have to wait until 1928 for this idea to be realized in reality.
That year, Norwegian engineer Rolf Widro built a physical linear accelerator at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.
But due to weak high-frequency technology, this accelerator can only accelerate potassium ions to 50 kiloelectronvolts.
Note that this is not a proton, but a potassium ion with a mass about forty times that of a proton.
Therefore, this accelerator, which ranks first in human history, can only be regarded as completing a verification and has little practical significance.
"It may not be the same as the acceleration model proposed by Ising. I have some other new ideas for particle acceleration, but you have to try it before you know. As you have always taught, you must Only when theory is put into practice can it be done.”
Chen Muwu would not copy Vidro step by step and create a less successful accelerator.
As long as he does it, he must get it right in one step, and at least he must produce something on the order of one megaelectron volt.
After the accelerator is built, if Rutherford still wants to use it to accelerate protons to bombard deuterons to search for neutrons, then let him go!
In Chen Muwu's laboratory, Rutherford saw with his own eyes the photographic film of the spectral lines emitted by deuterium atoms.
Even so, he was still very happy and praised Chen Muwu as usual and congratulated him on another new achievement.
Rutherford also proposed to announce this matter to the members of the Royal Society at the regular meeting of the Royal Society next week, and discuss with everyone what name should be given to this heavy hydrogen.
After reading the spectrum, Rutherford left the laboratory to chat with Old Bragg.
At noon, they wanted to ask Chen Muwu to go out for dinner together, but the invitation was rejected by the latter because he wanted to guide Oppenheimer in writing his thesis.
Going to dinner with two big smokers who had been trapped in the Royal Institute for a whole morning, Chen Muwu was afraid that he would turn into smoked human jerky.
That afternoon, Rutherford's deputy, the butler Chadwick, who organized the Cavendish Laboratory in an orderly manner, also came to the Royal Laboratory.
The reason why he did not come with Rutherford in the morning was because Chadwick was not in Cambridge at all these days, but in Liverpool, which is further north than Cambridge.
Thirty-four-year-old Chadwick is preparing for his wedding in Liverpool these days.
As a result, a telegram from Rutherford called him to London, telling him to come here to see the new discoveries made by Chen Muwu.
Along with Chadwick came Kapitsa to David Faraday's laboratory.
Kapitsa felt that since the groom was no longer in Liverpool, it seemed inappropriate for him to stay there alone with his best man.
Moreover, my good friend Chen Muwu has made new achievements this time, and I must come to support him!
(End of chapter)
