With Rutherford, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, in charge, the command in this small space certainly does not fall on Chen Muwu.
But there was nothing to direct. This particle accelerator team was nominally decentralized by Rutherford, and was led by Chen Muwu throughout the process.
But basically, Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft were busy, from design to procurement to construction.
Chen Muwu and Oppenheimer only come here occasionally, but there is really only a limit to what they can do.
Of course, the final completion of the generator was indispensable to Pauli.
Thanks to him staying peacefully on the European continent during this period, he did not visit Cambridge University, took a vacation in time, and did not choose the British mainland as his destination.
Rutherford's only command was to tell Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft to be careful when installing the charge conveyor belt on the generator, so as not to cause any damage to this hard-won machine.
These words of his are completely corny.
Rutherford attached great importance to the function of the particle accelerator, hoping to discover the electrically neutral particle in the nucleus.
But for Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft, this generator is more precious than anything else. In their hearts, the status of the particle accelerator is only higher than Rutherford's, second only to their own lifeblood.
How could these two people not understand that they must be careful when installing?
The installation work in the room is proceeding in an orderly manner.
After inspecting the area, Rutherford stood in the open air outside the door, smoking bags of cigarettes without saying a word.
Chen Muwu stood dozens of meters away from him. In his heart, he was also very concerned about whether this particle accelerator could be successful. He was no less nervous and uneasy than the other people related to this machine.
Even though he had done so many experiments before and never failed, it could not offset his current anxiety at all.
Building large machines is completely different from doing experiments. Although the principles have been known for a long time, there are more external influencing factors.
Moreover, Chen Muwu's success rate in building large machines before was 0%.
He asked Rutherford to help him apply for a patent for the electron microscope in 1924. However, two years later, due to various reasons, the behemoth electron microscope still only existed in the design blueprint.
Furthermore, the demand for electron microscopes at the Cavendish Laboratory was far less intense than for particle accelerators.
Even though the magnification of an electron microscope has been significantly improved compared to an ordinary microscope, it still cannot see the internal structure of atoms and cannot find the electrically neutral particles that Rutherford was looking for.
This has led to the fact that the laboratory is not as demanding as the particle accelerator for electron microscopes, and its advent is still far away.
Chen Muwu was already standing under the shade of a tree doing a set of Tai Chi. The door of the room finally opened again, and Cockcroft and Zhao Zhongyao walked out.
"Mr. Zhao, Mr. Cockcroft, how is it, how is it?"
Rutherford was more impatient than Chen Muwu, and he rushed forward with his pipe in his mouth.
"Director, everything is perfect. The generator is now completely assembled and can be considered complete."
Successful assembly alone is not enough. The next step is to test the voltage of the generator to see if it can reach the designed value.
Zhao Zhongyao's design potential difference is 1.5 million volts. Chen Muwu thinks that it can reach two-thirds of that level. As long as it can break through six figures, it will be considered a success.
The speedometer on the car's dashboard also states that the speed can exceed 200.
If you dare to exceed the speed limit of 160 on the highway, you will be punished to death if you are caught by the electronic eye!
Everyone came to the office next to them and changed into insulating and anti-static protective clothing and protective shoes.
Then through a small door, we came to the room where the generator was located.
"Okay, Mr. Zhao, Mr. Cockcroft, let's give it a try and see what the effect is of this big guy who has gathered everyone's hard work for so long!"
Chen Muwu was not given the job of giving orders, and he was also excluded from the manual work.
He just needs to be a good mascot and stand aside.
After Rutherford finished speaking, Cockcroft pressed the power switch.
The motor's axle rotates, and the east-west conveyor belt moves slowly.
A DC power supply that is turned on at the same time also continuously deprives electrons from the conveyor belt through the brush, thereby making it positively charged.
What followed was a long waiting time. Everyone, like Chen Muwu, stood in a safe zone in the room like a mascot, quietly looking at the only part of the generator that could be visibly running.
I don’t know what other people think, but Chen Muwu only hopes that the conveyor belt will not get stuck or be too tight and suddenly break.
After about seven or eight minutes, Zhao Zhongyao was ready to take the next step.
According to previous calculations, this time is enough for the charge on the spherical electrode to reach a saturation state. That is to say, the speed at which the charge is lost from the upper spherical electrode into the air is the same as the speed at which the conveyor belt transports the charge to the electrode, thus reaching an equilibrium state. .
The next step, of course, is to measure the voltage, where success or failure lies.
If it is possible to obtain a high voltage of millions of volts on this generator, then there will no longer be any risk of using it to accelerate charged particles.
Of course, for high voltages of millions of volts, to measure the specific voltage value on the spherical electrode, you can definitely no longer use the black box voltmeter used in middle school physics experiment classes.
No matter how difficult or unrealistic it is to build a voltmeter with a range of one million volts, just by using the method of connecting the spherical electrode, the voltmeter and the earth, although the voltage can be measured, the spherical electrode can also measure the voltage. The hard-earned electric charge can be transferred to the earth through the circuit in an instant.
Dust to dust, dust to dust, before the particles could be accelerated, the voltmeter was accelerated first.
Therefore, the detection method used by Zhao Zhongyao is to use a probe to measure the electrostatic field strength near the electrode without touching the spherical electrode, and then obtain the specific voltage on the electrode through numerical calculation.
To be on the safe side, he measured multiple sets of data and recorded them. Then he made a gesture with Cockcroft and asked him to stop the running machine.
The data has been obtained. Even if the generator is turned on, it will be useless.
Everyone returned to the nearby office again and changed out of protective clothing. Rutherford, who was sweating profusely, exhaled deeply.
He was always holding his breath and nervous in that room, staring at the machine without even daring to make a sound.
The weather is hot in summer, and everyone is uncomfortable being trapped in protective clothing that is not very breathable.
Zhao Zhongyao, Oppenheimer and Cockcroft each held a copy of the newly measured data in their hands, put them into the formulas that had been copied on the paper, and calculated the results separately.
Although the machines were already at a standstill, the heart in Rutherford's stomach did not drop even one bit.
He really wanted to know the calculation results as soon as possible, or in other words, he really wanted to know a calculation result that satisfied him.
But when things came to a head, Chen Muwu suddenly looked away.
If it succeeds, that's great. If it doesn't, it's useless to feel regretful.
He still has so much money on hand that he has not spent. Whether it is improving it or rebuilding it and building a new one, there is no problem at all.
If that doesn't work, just launch the cyclotron project. If you can't get the 260,000 pounds, you can go back to the old path and spend 26 pounds to build a cyclotron model and continue to beg for help. ah!
Whether it was Rutherford's nervousness or Chen Muwu's idea of starting a new business, they all disappeared immediately after Zhao Zhongyao was the first to get the calculation results.
Thanks to the multiplication table, his calculation speed is much faster than the other two people.
But when Zhao Zhongyao reported the specific data, he made a mistake and made a minor mistake.
As a person who participated in the whole process of witnessing the creation of the motor from scratch, he was also very excited at the moment.
Then Zhao Zhongyao put down the pen in his hand and shouted: "It's 1.39 million volts! Success, success!"
Rutherford was startled at first, and then quickly asked Chen Muwu next to him: "What did Zhao say?"
"Teacher, the voltage of this generator can reach 1.39 million volts. We succeeded."
The reason why Chen Muwu was asked to do this translation was because Zhao Zhongyao, who was silently reciting the multiplication table in his mind, blurted out the answer in Chinese.
Later, Oppenheimer and Cockcroft also gave the same result.
The development of the generator was finally considered a success.
In this situation, no one would care about why a generator designed to reach 1.5 million volts has an actual level of only 90% of its theoretical value.
Although there was a doctor who did not want to be named among the people present and wanted to install it lightly, but everyone was more or less happy for this success.
Rutherford, the oldest, hurriedly took out his pipe from his clothes, wanting to share his happiness and excitement with his old friend.
Cockcroft initially wanted to celebrate with so many hard-working partners, and his arms were already open. Unexpectedly, Zhao Zhongyao was as shy as his compatriots and couldn't let go.
This forced him to turn around, but fortunately the American Oppenheimer cooperated enough, and the two yelled and hugged each other tightly.
Only Chen Muwu is still paying attention to the follow-up work of the successful development of the generator.
After Rutherford finished smoking, he approached the teacher: "Teacher, now that the generator has been built, should we continue to block the news, or should we announce the results to the outside world? If we announce them, we should find reporters and write a paper. , or apply for a patent?”
"Chen, is there any need to choose?" Rutherford suddenly tilted his head and put his head next to Chen Muwu's head, "Of course I want them all."
This situation reminded Chen Muwu of an old man with a white beard wearing a red hat.
"Also," Rutherford continued to instruct the work, "there is no need for my name to appear in papers or newspapers. After all, this was done by you young people.
"Remember, reporters should not look for Crowther, who waits in the laboratory every day to report news. I don't like the stance that man showed during the strike."
Although Rutherford did not talk to him about Chen Muwu's previous article published in the "British Worker", he still used this method of killing the chicken to scare the monkey today in an attempt to give him a slap.
"As for the distribution of patent fees, I don't worry about this kind of thing. You can just study it with James in the future.
"Chen, I only care about one thing now. Since the potential difference of this generator has achieved the expected effect, when can it be truly used to accelerate particles?"
Chen Muwu took it for granted that he would blurt out the words "every minute".
With a sufficient potential difference, if you want to accelerate particles, don't you just need a particle source, a vacuum tube and a target to complete the entire process from particle acceleration to bombardment?
By the way, particle source.
Alpha particles can be found in natural radioactivity, and their energy itself is not low. Putting it in an accelerator to accelerate it gives people a feeling of superfluous.
Then the only positively charged particles that need to be accelerated are protons.
Protons...how to get them?
Chen Muwu's brain didn't react for a while. He thought it could be easily obtained from cathode rays just like Old Thomson discovered electrons.
But thinking about it again, that doesn't seem to be the case.
If you want a proton source, you must start with hydrogen gas. First, turn the hydrogen gas into a plasma of hydrogen gas, protons and electrons, and then separate the protons from it by applying voltage.
The difficulty of this matter can be said to be great or small.
But it certainly cannot be said that if you just built the generator today, you can use it to accelerate protons and bombard various target elements tomorrow.
So he could only give Rutherford an ambiguous answer: "Now there is only one proton source missing. After it is successfully developed, protons can be accelerated as soon as possible.
"But if you want to experiment, teacher, we can also try to accelerate alpha particles and reproduce the nuclear transmutation that Blackett discovered in the photographic films."
"I don't think that's necessary. It's a waste of time. You might as well hurry up and get the proton source out. The sooner the better!
"If there is no other work later, let's call it a night! In the evening, let's go to the Eagle Bar for a drink. I'll treat you!"
"Long live!"
"Long live the director!"
Rutherford walked out of the house dedicated to building accelerators with his hands behind his back.
He is still very satisfied with Chen Muwu's work. Good students can always come up with brilliant ideas and implement them.
Now that we have a killer weapon that can accelerate protons, we no longer have to guard the alpha particle source every day to bombard particles with great luck.
After this particle accelerator is fully put into use, starting from deuterium, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, these lighter nuclei, I will bombard them one by one!
Dr. Chen has worked so hard, so it’s time to apply to the college or school for a professorship.
Otherwise, after two years of graduation, and still carrying the title of doctorate every day, what if other schools in the world come to poach him with high-ranking officials and generous salaries, and what should young people do if they can't resist the temptation?
At the same time, old Thomson, his teacher who had a close connection with him, also prepared a new proposal for the upcoming Cambridge University Senate.
(End of chapter)
