science newsletter: Newsletter for Saturday 20 October

Σάββατο 20 Οκτωβρίου 2012

Newsletter for Saturday 20 October

Newsletter - 20 October - Today in Science History

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER - 20 OCTOBER

Feature for Today

Book of the Day

On 20 Oct 1891, Sir James Chadwick was born, the English Nobel prize-winning physicist who discovered the neutron, and thus became the premier authority in the Manhattan Project on how to generate and manipulate neutrons. The A-bomb chain reaction involves a heavy nucleus capturing a slow neutron, which triggers fission, the production of more neutrons and releases excess energy. Today's Science Store pick is The Neutron and the Bomb: A Biography of Sir James Chadwick, by Andrew Brown, who presents Chadwick's central role in the unfolding drama of nuclear physics. Yet, Chadwick is not widely remembered these days, which is why reading Brown's biography of him gives a salutary reminder of his achievements.
Yesterday's pick: A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford. For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today
	"He was a severe critic of English usage and seemed to carry in his head the whole of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases." - Remark about Sir James Chadwick, (born 20 Oct 1891) by one of his students, Mark Oliphant in an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (source)
	(About her research on the genetics of mutant fruit flies) "I immediately loved working with flies. They fascinated me, and followed me around in my dreams." - Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, German Nobel prize-winning developmental geneticist (born 20 Oct 1942).
	"The only object of theoretical physics is to calculate the results that can be compared with experiment ... It is quite unnecessary that any satisfactory description of the whole course of the phenomena should be given." - Paul A.M. Dirac, (died 20 Oct 1984)

QUIZ
Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page.
Births
	Sir James Chadwick, born 20 Oct 1891, was an English physicist, who received the Nobel Prize for Physics (1935) for the discovery of the neutron, then a new nuclear particle. He led the UK's work on the atomic bomb in WW II, and was knighted in 1945. At which university laboratory was the neutron discovered by Chadwick?
Deaths
	P.A.M. Dirac (1902-1984) was an English physicist and mathematician. In 1933 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. What was his great contribution to physics?
Events
	On 20 Oct of a certain year, Dr. Lee DeForest (26 Aug 1873 - 30 Jun 1961), one of the "fathers of radio," announced his three-element electrical vacuum tube (now known as a triode) to a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers He had discovered that when a mesh, or grid, of wire was placed between the filament and collector "plate" in a diode tube (first made by J. Ambrose Fleming, 1904), a large voltage-amplifying effect could be produced. In what decade was the triode announced?
	On 20 Oct 1970, American agricultural pioneer Norman Borlaug received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the "green revolution" that increased grain production throughout the Third World by perfecting and introducing new strains of wheat and rice crops. Which category of Nobel Prize was he awarded?

Answers

When you have your answers ready to all the questions above, you'll find all the information to check them, and more, on the October 20 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers.

Fast answers for the previous newsletter for October 19: theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars; New Zealand; John Atanasoff; 82 kg.

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