The Path to Nuclear Fission The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto ... - VEA
The Path to Nuclear Fission The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto ... - VEA
The Path to Nuclear Fission The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto ... - VEA
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Path</strong> <strong>to</strong> <strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Fission</strong> – <strong>The</strong> S<strong>to</strong>ry <strong>of</strong> <strong>Lise</strong> <strong>Meitner</strong> <strong>and</strong> Ot<strong>to</strong> Hahn<br />
14. What do Hahn <strong>and</strong> Strassman think it is? Why don’t they think it could be Barium, even though its<br />
properties suggest it is?<br />
<strong>The</strong>y think it must be Radium, as they think only small changes <strong>to</strong> the nucleus are possible.<br />
15. What method does Hahn use <strong>to</strong> try <strong>to</strong> find Radium? Does this work?<br />
Fractional crystallisation or fractionation.<br />
16. What do they conclude? Why is it so hard for them <strong>to</strong> accept?<br />
Uranium has produced radioactive Barium. <strong>The</strong>y can’t accept that Uranium could change<br />
in<strong>to</strong> something as small as Barium.<br />
17. How do <strong>Meitner</strong> <strong>and</strong> Ot<strong>to</strong> Robert Frisch explain the presence <strong>of</strong> Barium, using Bohr’s model <strong>of</strong><br />
the nucleus? What happens when they add up the mass <strong>of</strong> the residues?<br />
That the nucleus was like a drop, as Bohr suggested, <strong>and</strong> is elongated <strong>and</strong> split in<strong>to</strong> barium<br />
<strong>and</strong> Kryp<strong>to</strong>n, but their calculations showed that the 2 new nuclei would add up <strong>to</strong> a mass<br />
lighter than the uranium nucleus.<br />
18. What dawned on them on Christmas Eve?<br />
<strong>The</strong>y then calculated the amount <strong>of</strong> energy locked in the nucleus <strong>of</strong> Uranium <strong>to</strong> be 200,000<br />
electron volts. <strong>The</strong>y thought about the relationship between energy <strong>and</strong> mass <strong>and</strong><br />
remembered Einstein’s theoretical equation E=mc 2 , <strong>and</strong> then it all added up. <strong>The</strong> missing<br />
mass was converted <strong>to</strong> energy.<br />
19. How did the 1944 Award <strong>of</strong> the Nobel Prize <strong>to</strong> Ot<strong>to</strong> Hahn “skew his<strong>to</strong>ry”?<br />
<strong>The</strong> prize was given for chemistry, but physics was used <strong>to</strong> interpret the results, so it was an<br />
interdisciplinary discovery.<br />
20. Why does <strong>Meitner</strong> say Hahn did not deserve all the credit for the discovery <strong>of</strong> fission?<br />
She said that Hahn deserved the prize in chemistry, but that she <strong>and</strong> Frisch had contribute d<br />
something not insignificant <strong>to</strong> the clarification <strong>of</strong> the process <strong>of</strong> nuclear fission, how it<br />
originates <strong>and</strong> how it produces so much energy <strong>and</strong> that this was something very remote<br />
from Hahn.<br />
21. What posthumous honour is bes<strong>to</strong>wed on <strong>Meitner</strong>?<br />
Element number 109 is named <strong>Meitner</strong>ium for her, when it is created at the Heavy element<br />
research Centre in Darmstadt Germany in 1989<br />
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