Atomic story 2

Splitting the Atom

Well before WWII in the early 20th Century scientist were working on Nuclear (Atomic) Physics and chemistry.

The neutron was discovered by James Chadwick at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in February 1932. In April 1932, his Cavendish colleagues John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split lithium atoms with accelerated protons. Enrico Fermi and his team in Rome conducted experiments involving the bombardment of elements by slow neutrons, which produced heavier elements and isotopes. Then, in December 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann at Hahn's laboratory in Berlin-Dahlem bombarded uranium with slowed neutrons, and discovered that barium had been produced, and therefore that the uranium nucleus had been split. Hahn wrote to his colleague Lise Meitner, who, with her nephew Otto Frisch, developed a theoretical justification for the process, which they published in Nature in 1939. By analogy with the division of biological cells, they named the process "fission".

The discovery of fission raised the possibility that a very powerful bomb could be produced. A few hundred pounds of say Uranium or so could produce an explosion the equivalent of many thousands of tons of high explosive. At this time no one was sure.