Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-08-30T22:00:00+00:00

Walther W. G. Bothe

To try to determine something about the properties of this radiation, Bothe and Becker tried putting objects in the way of the radiation. They found the radiation to be remarkably penetrating. It even passed through several centimeters of lead. The only form of radiation that was known at that time to come out of bombarded matter with the capacity of penetrating a thick layer of lead was gamma rays. Bothe and Becker, therefore, decided they had produced gamma rays and reported this.

In 1932 the Joliot-Curies repeated the Bothe-Becker work and got the same results. However, among the objects they placed in the path of the new radiation, they included paraffin, which is made up of the light atoms of carbon and hydrogen. To their surprise, protons were knocked out of the paraffin.

Gamma rays had never been observed to do this, but the Joliot-Curies could not think what else the radiation might be. They simply reported that they had discovered gamma rays to be capable of a new kind of action.

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