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Anthony L. Turkevich
Anthony Leonid Turkevich (July 23, 1916 – September 7, 2002) was an American radiochemist who was the first to determine the composition of the Moon's surface using an alpha scattering spectrometer on the Surveyor 5 mission in 1967. Early life and education Turkevich was born on July 23, 1916, in Manhattan, New York, at the bishop's house attached to Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral. His father, Leonid Turkevich, was dean at the time, and later became the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in North America. He had two brothers. Turkevich studied at Dartmouth College and obtained his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1937. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University on the structure of small molecules in 1940. Career Turkevich moved to the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago as a research assistant with Robert Mulliken where he studied molecular spectroscopy and nuclear fission products. In 1942, during World War II, he joined the Manhattan P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, largest, and average area per state and territory, smallest county by area in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan constitutes the center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area. Manhattan serves as New York City's Economy of New York City, economic and Government of New York City, administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, Media in New York City, media, and show business, entertainment capital of the world. Present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonization of the Americas, D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spectroscopy
Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectroscopy, primarily in the electromagnetic spectrum, is a fundamental exploratory tool in the fields of astronomy, chemistry, materials science, and physics, allowing the composition, physical structure and electronic structure of matter to be investigated at the atomic, molecular and macro scale, and over astronomical distances. Historically, spectroscopy originated as the study of the wavelength dependence of the absorption by gas phase matter of visible light dispersed by a prism. Current applications of spectroscopy include biomedical spectroscopy in the areas of tissue analysis and medical imaging. Matter waves and acoustic waves can also be considered forms of radiative energy, and recently gravitational waves have been associa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alamogordo, New Mexico
Alamogordo () is a city in and the county seat of Otero County, New Mexico, United States. A city in the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains and to the west by Holloman Air Force Base. The population was 31,384 as of the 2020 census. Alamogordo is widely known for its connection with the 1945 Trinity test, which was the first ever explosion of an atomic bomb. Humans have lived in the Alamogordo area for at least 11,000 years. The present settlement, established in 1898 to support the construction of the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad, is an early example of a planned community. The city was incorporated in 1912. Tourism became an important economic factor with the creation of White Sands National Monument in 1933, which is still one of the biggest attractions of the city today. During the 1950s and 1960s, Alamogordo was an unofficial center for research on pilot safety and the developing United States' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). Yields in the low kilotons can devastate cities. A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as can release energy equal to more than 1.2 megatons of TNT (5.0 PJ). Apart from the blast, effects of nuclear weapons include firestorms, extreme heat and ionizing radiation, radioactive nuclear fallout, an electromagnetic pulse, and a radar blackout. The first nuclear weapons were developed by the Allied Manhattan Project during World War II. Their production continues to require a large scientific and industrial complex, pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trinity Test
Trinity was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. MWT (11:29:21 GMT) on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, or "gadget", of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Concerns about whether the complex Fat Man design would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test. The code name "Trinity" was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, possibly inspired by the poetry of John Donne. The test, both planned and directed by Kenneth Bainbridge, was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (renamed the White Sands Proving Ground just before the test). The only structures originally in the immediate vicinity were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States, American southwest. Best known for its central role in helping develop the First Atomic bomb, first atomic bomb, LANL is one of the world's largest and most advanced scientific institutions. Los Alamos was established in 1943 as Project Y, a top-secret site for designing nuclear weapons under the Manhattan Project during World War II.The site was variously called Los Alamos Laboratory and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Chosen for its remote yet relatively accessible location, it served as the main hub for conducting and coordinating nuclear research, bringing together some of the world's most famous scientists, among them numerous Nobel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neutron Capture
Neutron capture is a nuclear reaction in which an atomic nucleus and one or more neutrons collide and merge to form a heavier nucleus. Since neutrons have no electric charge, they can enter a nucleus more easily than positively charged protons, which are repelled Electrostatics, electrostatically. Neutron capture plays a significant role in the cosmic nucleosynthesis of heavy elements. In stars it can proceed in two ways: as a rapid process (r-process) or a slow process (s-process). Nuclei of Mass number, masses greater than 56 Iron peak, cannot be formed by exothermic thermonuclear reactions (i.e., by nuclear fusion) but can be formed by neutron capture. Neutron capture on protons yields a line at 2.223 MeV predicted and commonly observed in solar flares. Neutron capture at small neutron flux At small neutron flux, as in a nuclear reactor, a single neutron is captured by a nucleus. For example, when natural gold (197Au) is irradiated by neutrons (n), the isotope gold-198, 198A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plutonium
Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon, and hydrogen. When exposed to moist air, it forms oxides and hydrides that can expand the sample up to 70% in volume, which in turn flake off as a powder that is pyrophoric. It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous. Plutonium was first synthesized and isolated in late 1940 and early 1941, by deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. First, neptunium-238 (half-life 2.1 days) was synthesized, which then beta-decayed to form the new element with atomic number 94 and atomic weight 238 (half-life 88 years). Since uranium had been named after the planet Uranus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uranium Hexafluoride
Uranium hexafluoride, sometimes called hex, is the inorganic compound with the formula . Uranium hexafluoride is a volatile, white solid that is used in enriching uranium for nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Preparation Uranium dioxide is converted with hydrofluoric acid (HF) to uranium tetrafluoride: : The resulting is subsequently oxidized with fluorine to give the hexafluoride: : In samples contaminated with uranium trioxide, uranyl fluoride, an oxyfluoride compound is produced in the HF step: : which can be fluorinated to produce the same product, uranium hexafluoride. : The fluorination step in both reactions above are highly exothermic. Properties Physical properties At atmospheric pressure, sublimes at 56.5 °C. The solid-state structure was determined by neutron diffraction at 77 K and 293 K.J. C. Taylor, P. W. Wilson, J. W. Kelly: „The structures of fluorides. I. Deviations from ideal symmetry in the structure of crystalline UF6: a neutron diffract ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaseous Diffusion
Gaseous diffusion is a technology that was used to produce enriched uranium by forcing gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6) through microporous membranes. This produces a slight separation (enrichment factor 1.0043) between the molecules containing uranium-235 (235U) and uranium-238 (238U). By use of a large cascade of many stages, high separations can be achieved. It was the first process to be developed that was capable of producing enriched uranium in industrially useful quantities, but is nowadays considered obsolete, having been superseded by the more-efficient gas centrifuge process (enrichment factor 1.05 to 1.2). Gaseous diffusion was devised by Francis Simon and Nicholas Kurti at the Clarendon Laboratory in 1940, tasked by the MAUD Committee with finding a method for separating uranium-235 from uranium-238 in order to produce a bomb for the British Tube Alloys project. The prototype gaseous diffusion equipment itself was manufactured by Metropolitan-Vickers (MetroVick ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uranium Isotopes
Uranium (U) is a naturally occurring radioactive element (radioelement) with no stable isotopes. It has two primordial isotopes, uranium-238 and uranium-235, that have long half-lives and are found in appreciable quantity in Earth's crust. The decay product uranium-234 is also found. Other isotopes such as uranium-233 have been produced in breeder reactors. In addition to isotopes found in nature or nuclear reactors, many isotopes with far shorter half-lives have been produced, ranging from U to U (except for U). The standard atomic weight of natural uranium is . Natural uranium consists of three main isotopes, U (99.2739–99.2752% natural abundance), U (0.7198–0.7202%), and U (0.0050–0.0059%). All three isotopes are radioactive (i.e., they are radioisotopes), and the most abundant and stable is uranium-238, with a half-life of (about the age of the Earth). Uranium-238 is an alpha emitter, decaying through the 18-member uranium series into lead-206. The decay series of uran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metallurgical Laboratory
The Metallurgical Laboratory (or Met Lab) was a scientific laboratory from 1942 to 1946 at the University of Chicago. It was established in February 1942 and became the Argonne National Laboratory in July 1946. The laboratory was established in February 1942 to study and use the newly discovered chemical element plutonium. It researched plutonium's chemistry and metallurgy, designed the world's first nuclear reactors to produce it, and developed chemical processes to separate it from other elements. In August 1942 the lab's chemical section was the first to chemically separate a weighable sample of plutonium, and on 2 December 1942, the Met Lab produced the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, in the reactor Chicago Pile-1, which was constructed under the stands of the university's old football stadium, Stagg Field. The Metallurgical Laboratory was established as part of the Metallurgical Project, under the S-1 Committee, and also known as the "Pile" or "X-10" Project, hea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
