T h e E xi n ce o f ste th e N e u tro n

James Chadwick

Kitty Chong Paolo Aquino Paul Wong

Who I Am
born 20th of October, 1891, in Bollington, Cheshire, England a tte n d e d M a n ch e ste r H i h S ch o o l g p ri r to e n te ri g M a n ch e ste r o n U n i rsi i 1 9 0 8 ve ty n u p o n g ra d u a ti n , sp e n t th e tw o ye a rs o u n d e r Pro fe sso r E rn e st R u th e rfo rd ( worked on various radioactivity p ro b l m s) e

Who I Am
1913 proceeded to work under Professor Hans Geiger at the Technische Universitt Berlin d u ri g W W 1 , w a s i te rn e d a t th e n n R u h l b e n P. O . W . C a m p j st o u tsi e e u d B e rl n i
W h i e i te rn e d , h a d th e fre e d o m to se t l n u p a l b o ra to ry i th e sta b l s a n e sp e n t m o st o f th e w a r ye a rs i n R u h l b e n u n ti e i e r' l b o ra to ry e lG g s a i te rce d e d fo r h i re l a se n s e

Who I Am
returned to England to resume work under Ernest Rutherford who moved to Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge Pro o f o f th e exi n ce o f th e n e u tro n ste H u g h e s M e d a lo f th e R o ya lS o ci ty e
( 1932 ) N o b e lPri i P h ysi ( 1 9 3 5 ) ze n cs

Discovery of the Neutron

Prior to discovery, atom = protons and electrons

protons have much greater mass than electrons

clustered together in the atom's core, a ttra cti nucleus ca l ve e or e l ctri

fo rce s ca u se d th e e l ctro n s to o rb i th e e t n u cl u s e

 For instance, helium was known to have an atomic number of 2 but a mass numberth o 4. h t th e re w e re of u g S o m e sci n ti e sts

Disparity between an element's atomic number and its atomic mass

a d d i o n a lp ro to n s i th e n u cl u s, ti n e a l n g w i a n e q u a ln u m b e r o f o th e l ctro n s to ca n ce lo u t th e a d d i o n a l e ti ch a rg , In 1920e . Rutherford proposed that an electron and a proton could actually combine to form a new, neutral particle.

How I discovered the Neutron

(1) Experiment of Bothe and Becker - 1930
bombarded beryllium with strong alpha-rays the beryllium emitted a neutral radiation that could penetrate 200 millimeters of lead In contrast, it takes less than one millimeter of lead to stop a proton Bothe and Becker assumed the neutral radiation was high-energy

How I discovered the Neutron

(2) Experiment of I. Curie and Joliot
studied the then-unidentified radiation from beryllium as it hit a paraffin wax target they found that this radiation knocked loose protons from hydrogen atoms in that target and those protons recoiled with very high velocity

 Joliot-Curie believed the radiation hitting the paraffin target must be high energy gamma photons. However photons, having no mass, wouldnt knock loose particles as heavy as protons from the target.

How I discovered the Neutron

How I discovered the Neutron

To eject protons at such a high velocity, the rays must have an energy of 50 million electron volts. The alpha particles colliding with beryllium nuclei could produce only 14 million electron volts. The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Thus, the neutral radiation cannot be gamma rays.

The Experiment, Step-byStepa vacuum chamber I put a piece of beryllium in

with some polonium.

In the path of the rays, I put a target. When the rays hit the target, they knocked atoms out of it. The atoms, which became electrically charged in the collision, flew into a gas-filled chamber.

When a charged particle passed through the chamber, it ionized the gas molecules. The ions drifted toward an electrode. I measured the current flowing through the electrode. Knowing the current, I could count the atoms and estimate their speed.

H i h -e n e rg y a l h a ra ys fro m p o l n i m co l i e g p o u ld w i th e b e ryl i m ta rg e t th lu ra d i ti n w i a o th stro n g p e n e tra b i i l ty co m e s o u t to h i t th e p ro to n s i n e th e p araT h n ffi kn oa ye r. lcke d p ro to n s a re o b se rve d i th e n cl u d o

[My Experimental Apparatus]

Experimental Results
I used targets of different elements, measuring the energy needed to eject the atoms of each. Gamma rays could not explain the speed of the atoms. The only good explanation for my result was a neutral particle. To prove that the particle was indeed the neutron, I had to measure its mass.

Experimental Results
If you knew what your target was made of, but did not know what sort of projectile was hitting it, you could calculate the mass of the projectile from the speed of the target particle.

Using the laws of conservation of momentum and energy, I calculated the mass of the neutral particle. It was 1.0067 times the mass of the proton. The neutral radiation was

Experimental Results
So I became convinced that the radiation ejected by the beryllium was in fact a neutral particle with about the mass of a proton. I also tried other targets in addition to the paraffin wax, including helium, nitrogen, and lithium, which helped me determine that the mass of the new particle was 1.0067 times the mass of the proton.

Alternative Explanation
This experiment can be likened to pool balls on a pool table. If you were to strike an 8 ball with a marble, the 8 ball will not travel far due to the large difference in mass. Now strike the 8 ball with the cue ball, which has a very similar mass, and you can easily send it traveling far across the table. In this case, the 8 ball would likely be a proton from an element, the marble would represent a gamma ray or photon, and the cue ball would be the neutron. If the marble and the cue ball were invisible, you would prove that the cue ball existed

Sources:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1935/chadwi

http://dev.physicslab.org/Document.aspx?doctype=3&filename= http://www.ph.surrey.ac.uk/partphys/chapter2/Neutron.html http://www.vias.org/physics/bk2_05_05.html http://www.davidparker.com/janine/twins.html http://www.helium.com/items/1518755-discovery-of-the-neutron