The How and Why Wonder Book of Atomic Energy

52 Pages·1864·134.833 MB·English

by  Donald Barr

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THE HOW AND WHY WONDER BOOK OF

ATOMIC ENERGY

Written by DONALD BARR
Assistant Dean, School of Engineering
Columbia University
Illustrated by GEORGE J. ZAFFO
Editorial Production: DONALD D. WOLF
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Edited under the supervision of
Dr. Paul E. Blackwood, Washington, D. C.
Text and illustrations approved by
Oakes A. White, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn, New York
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS • LONDON
Introduction
Big ideas sometimes deal with very small things, and small things are
often exceedingly important. Witness the atom. Scientists have had some of
their biggest ideas about these tiny particles of matter. Their ideas about
atoms have changed as discoveries have brought new information into the
picture. The How and Why Wonder Book of Atomic Energy takes the
science-minded reader along the exciting road of discovery about the atom
that led to the first use of atomic energy in a controlled way, and tells how
people from many countries made scientific contributions.
The life-blood of scientific activity is in exploring all parts of the universe
— even the tiny parts represented by atoms — and explaining the events
that take place. Though individual atoms cannot be seen, they are the basis
of all matter. And in the search for more information about atoms, scientists
gradually came upon new knowledge about the energy within. This book
tells this wonderful story.
Parents and schools will want to place The How and Why Wonder Book
of Atomic Energy alongside the other books in this series. It not only
brings the young reader up to date on the development of atomic energy,
but challenges one to think about the yet-to-come atomic age of the future.
Pant E. Blackwood

Thisbookhasbeenspeciallyre-editedforpublication

inGreatBritain.

© 1964, byWonderBooks, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Publishedpursuanttoagreementwithownerofthetrademark.WonderBooks,Inc.,NewYork,U.S.A.

PublishedbyTransworldPublishers,BashleyRd.,London,N.W.10.

PrintedbyHuntBarnard&Co.Ltd.,atthesignoftheDolphin,Aylesbury,Buckinghamshire.
/
Contents
Page Page
THE ATOMIC AGE BEGINS 5 What is chemical energy? 27
Death of a City 6 Where does “atomic energy” come from? 27
What holds the nucleus together? 28
DAWN IN THE DESERT 6
How much binding energy is in the nucleus? 28
Zero Hour 7
How many kinds of atoms are there? 28
A DANGEROUS GAME 7 Are all the atoms of an element the same? 29
Fifty-two Tons of Uranium 8 What is an isotope? 29
Will It Work? 8 What is the “binding energy curve”? 30
The Game Starts 10 Did the big atoms have the most
binding energy? 31
A LITTLE EXTRA WORK 11
How can we get at some binding energy? 31
Letter from Berlin 11
A Sound Nobody Ever Heard 12 Why doesn’t binding energy stay inside
the atom? 31
A VERY STRANGE IDEA . 12
ATOM SMASHING 32
What is the universe made of? 12
Who discovered radioactivity? 32
What is the difference between
Do atoms ever split by themselves? 32
matter and energy? 13
Why was radioactivity important? 32
How can we tell matter from energy? 15
Why are neutrons good atomic bullets? 35
What is energy? 15
How do we split uranium atoms? 35
How do we measure energy? 17
What happens when a uranium atom splits? 35
Can we “make” energy? 17
What is a “chain reaction”? 36
Do we burn up energy? 18
What do we need to make a chain reaction? 37
Where does used energy go to? 18
What isotopes are good atomic fuel? 38
What happens when we bum matter? 18
Can we make atomic fuel? 39
Can we change matter into energy? 18
How do we separate isotopes? 39
When did physicists change their mind? 19
What is gaseous diffusion? 40
What does E = me2 mean? 20
What does an isotope separation-plant
Does E = me2 work for all kinds of matter? 20 look like? 41
How much energy can we get from matter? 21 How do we start the chain reaction? 41
INSIDE THE ATOM 21 Why is there a “critical mass”? 41
What is matter made of? 21 How does an A-bomb work? 42
What are elements? 22 How can we tame the A-bomb? 42
What did Dalton discover about atoms? 22 How do we keep from getting
too many neutrons? 43
Are atoms solid? 22
Why are slow neutrons better than
Can we see atoms? 23 fast neutrons? 43
How did we learn what is inside the atom? 23 How do we make the neutrons slow down? 44
How do we look at atoms? 24 What kind of reactors can we build? 46
What is inside the atom? 24 How can we use reactors? 46
How big is the nucleus? 24 Why do we need new elements? 46
What is the nucleus made of? 25 SUNS MADE TO ORDER 47
Why do the electrons keep flying around Where do stars get their energy? 47
the nucleus? 26 What happens inside the sun? 47
Is atomic energy a special kind of energy? 26 How does an H-bomb work? 47
How do atoms form chemicals? 26 Can we tame the H-bomb? 48

An atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima.
A B-29 bomber dropped
the first wartime A-bomb.
The Atomic Age Begins

At 8:15 in the morning, on August
6, 1945, people in the Japanese city of
Hiroshima were getting out of bed, eat­
ing breakfast, beginning the day’s work.
Japan was at war. Nazi Germany’s ter­
I rible clanking armies had been beaten,
•*
and the madman Hitler who had mur­
dered whole countries was dead. The
i
dictator Mussolini was dead, too. and
<t Italy had gone over to the other side.
The Japanese empire, which had started
>jL out to conquer the whole world with
i those partners, was now left to face the
United States and her allies alone. Gen­
eral MacArthur’s armies were already
i. 5
shooting and slashing their way into the Dawn in the Desert

islands that guarded Japan. For weeks
American planes had rained fire bombs Let us go back three weeks. It is a
on Japanese cities. Thus far, Hiroshima little before 3:00 o’clock in the morning
had been spared. Then a lone American on July 16, 1945. The rain is pouring
plane streaked over the city. It dropped down and the lightning is wildly stab­
one bomb. The Atomic Age had begun. bing the clouds over a lonely corner of
Alamogordo Air Base in the New Mexi­
co desert. It is not deserted tonight.
Men are scurrying through the dark­
DEATH OF A CITY
ness. There are soldiers, some of them
?
There was a vast flash of fire, brighter wearing generals’ stars. There are quiet
than the sun, and hotter. There was a men in business suits, whom the others
great shuddering of the earth and a address respectfully as “Professor.” Be­
great roar and a scotching wind. There tween the crashes of thunder, they talk
was a cloud shaped like a huge mush­ in little groups nervously. They go into
room, silently standing above the ruins. a shed to examine some wires and in­
There was nothing left of the centre of struments and drive away. Some go to
Hiroshima except charred, dusty rub­ another blockhouse a few miles away.
bish from which deadly invisible rays Some drive six miles through the storm
were streaming. There were 78,150
people known to be dead and 13,983
people missing. From one bomb!
The President of the United States,
Harry S. Truman, broadcast a warning • -r5-.
to Japan. This, he said, was a new kind
of bomb, a bomb which used the forces
that made the sun hot, and America
had more of these bombs. The President
was slightly wrong in his science. But .. -
that did not matter. The Japanese knew
that there was a new force in the world,
and soon they surrendered.
On that August day, in laboratories
all over the United States, scientists
shivered and looked grim. That was not
the way they had wanted the Atomic E55
Age to begin.
, J / *
,„•
The first atomic explosion on earth occurred in the
New Mexico desert near Alamogordo in July, 1945.
i______
6
I
and climb a tall steel tower to peer at praying. In one shed, when zero minus
a bulky, strange device nestling there two is called, everyone lies on the floor,
among more wires and instruments. face down, with his feet pointing to the
This is the device which is to be tested tower several miles away. In the other
— an atomic device. It is known simply shed, the civilian scientist in charge of
as “Fat Man.” The men keep looking the project, Dr. J. Robert Oppen-
at the sky. heimer, is hardly breathing. He holds
onto a post to steady himself. At zero
minus forty-five seconds, the automatic
timers click on. The red hand glides
ZERO HOUR
around the clock face. Then the an­
At 3:30 there is a decision. Fat Man nouncer yells, “Now!”
will be tested. At 4:00 o’clock the rain A blazing flash from the tower lights
stops, but the clouds are thick overhead. up the face of the desert and the moun­
By 5:10, the men have all gathered in tains around it. There is an earsplitting
the blockhouses. A voice crackles from roar which goes on and on. A blast of
the loudspeakers: “Zero minus twenty air knocks down two men who have
minutes.” Men are rubbing suntan lo­ stayed outside one of the sheds. An
tion on their faces and arms. The talk­ enormous, many-coloured cloud boils
ing dies down. Some of the men are up and up until it is eight miles tall.
As it rises, the storm-clouds seem to
move aside for it.
In the two sheds, the stiff faces have
eased into smiles. Everyone is shaking
everyone else’s hand. There are shouts
:' •• ■'
of laughter. A distinguished chemistry
professor from Massachusetts throws
his arms around Dr. Oppenheimer. “We
did it! We did it!”
Fat Man has passed the test. The first
atomic explosion on earth has just taken
place.
A Dangerous Game

Let us go back two and a half years.
It is mid-morning in Chicago, Decem­
ber 2, 1942. For a long time the Uni­
versity of Chicago has not played any

" V,’-. football in its stadium, Stagg Field. It
• .- - :■ WA
is a pity to waste the place. Under the
1
grandstands there are rooms and courts tons of it — is here, buried in the big
for playing other games, and something black pile under the seats at the football
is certainly going on in a squash court field. Also buried in the pile are 14,500
under the West Stands. But this is not lumps of other stuff that has uranium
squash, which is played with a rubber in it.
ball and rackets. This game is played Other holes have been drilled through
with balls and rackets too small to see the stacked graphite bricks. Lying in
— hundreds of millions of them. The these are long rods of another rare
players can get hurt. metal, called cadmium. What the
Above one end of the court is a bal­ strange uranium can do, the strange
cony. Toward the other end, there is cadmium can stop — the players hope.
a monstrous black pile of something. For this game has never been played
It is strange-looking stuff, yet it some­ before, not since the creation of the
how seems familiar. It is not metal, yet earth. As the cadmium rods are pulled
it is shiny, even a little greasy-looking. out of the pile, millions of tiny “balls”
Where have we seen it before? In a — much too small to see, even with a
pencil. microscope — will shoot out of the
The “lead” in a pencil is not lead uranium lumps. They will go right
at all, but a form of carbon called through the graphite and hit nearby
graphite. Carbon comes in many forms, uranium lumps, knocking more tiny
including coal and diamonds, but balls out of them. These, too, will begin
graphite is best for playing the atomic flying around and knocking more balls
game. It can be sawed into neat shapes into the game. And the uranium and
like wood. It can be made very pure. graphite will get hotter and hotter and
It is not rare. hotter, like a furnace.
FIFTY-TWO TONS OF URANIUM WILL IT WORK?
This pile is made of neatly sawed Now if the players are wrong, either
bricks, stacked crisscross. It is very pure of two things might happen. One is —
— or the players in the squash court nothing. There may not be enough
hope it is — because if it isn’t, some­ balls, or they may not shoot through the
thing might go terribly wrong. And graphite. Three yqars of hard work and
there are 1,350 tons of graphite in the millions and millions of dollars would
court, piled 30 feet wide, 32 feet long, be wasted. The other thing that might
21 Vi feet high. Some of the bricks in happen is — an explosion. There may
the middle of the stack have holes be too many balls. The “furnace” may
drilled in them. In these holes are lumps get too hot. And if it does, it could blow
of a strange, rare metal called uranium. up not only the players and the squash
Almost all the uranium metal in the court and the football field, but Chi­
United States of America — fifty-two cago, Illinois.
8