Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 195 143 Is room temperature superconductivity feasible?

Chen Muwu, who has been in the David Faraday Laboratory in London, doesn't know much about the news from the Cavendish Laboratory.

During this period, although Oppenheimer came to London from Cambridge University.

But since Chen Muwu left at the beginning of the year, he has been following Old Thomson all the time. He doesn't know and doesn't want to know about Rutherford's situation. Of course, he doesn't know that Rutherford's most dependent deputy Chadwick To get married.

Chen Muwu was so focused on making money and prizes that he didn't have so much time to make friends.

Had it not been for the discovery of deuterium this time, perhaps he would not have written to Rutherford.

After all, although plexiglass makes money, it is not an important experimental result.

If he wrote to the teacher to report the good news, he might be scolded by Rutherford.

Because in the eyes of a pure experimental physicist like him, to engage in theory is heresy, to engage in inventions, and even to engage in chemical inventions, which is completely irresponsible.

Chen Muwu didn't expect his teacher to have such a big reaction on the deuterium matter. Not only did he come from Cambridge in person, but he also called Chadwick, who was about to get married, from Liverpool to London.

Chadwick, born in 1891, can be regarded as a model of late marriage and late childbearing.

He is 34 years old this year, but before Chen Muwu left Cambridge University at the beginning of the year, he had been single.

It's not that Chadwick didn't want to get married early, it's just that when he was young, he encountered a bad luck.

Ten years ago, he was exactly Chen Muwu's age.

Chadwick, who had just received a Master of Science degree from Victoria University, received an 1851 Research Scholarship, which allowed him to temporarily leave Rutherford in Manchester to study abroad in Germany.

In the second year of Germany, World War I broke out.

Chadwick, who was still in Berlin, was directly taken as a prisoner by the Germans and imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp.

In the past few years when Chen Muwu made achievements, Chadwick could only count stars in the prisoner-of-war camp.

After the war ended, he returned to England as a 27-year-old man who had not yet received a doctorate.

Thinking of starting a family first and then starting a business, he followed Rutherford from Manchester to Cambridge, and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from Gonville and Case College, Cambridge University through his own efforts.

And because of Rutherford's appreciation, he was appointed as the deputy of Cavendish Laboratory.

Chadwick is now finally considered a successful career, and began to think about starting a family.

At the beginning of the year, while at home in Manchester, he made a chance trip to Liverpool, where he met the daughter of a Liverpool Stock Exchange broker.

The relationship between the two heated up rapidly, and in the summer, both of them had already considered marriage.

When he was preparing for the wedding, a telegram from Rutherford called him over.

"Mr. Chadwick, congratulations! If you hadn't come to London this time, I wouldn't have known you were going to get married. I'm so sorry that I made you come all the way when I was busy preparing for the wedding .”

Although Chen Muwu was embarrassed, he always wanted to say polite words.

"It's still business matters. It doesn't matter if I get married two days earlier or two days later. Sir Rutherford said that your discovery is very great. Maybe you can find evidence of the existence of atomic nuclear neutral particles from it. "

"The teacher told me about his idea this morning. He wants to use hydrogen nuclei to bombard heavy hydrogen nuclei. If other things besides protons can be found in the nuclear reaction products, maybe the newly formed products are electricity. sex particles.

"It's just how to accelerate protons. There is no better way right now. I suggested to the teacher that it is better to build an accelerator in the Cavendish Laboratory."

Chen Muwu began to fool around with the matter of building an accelerator again, although he discovered that neutrons do not need an accelerator to accelerate alpha particles.

But the method of bombarding deuterium with hydrogen nuclei was proposed by Rutherford, and he just happened to be able to pull the banner and pull the tiger's skin.

When Chen Muwu and Chadwick were talking about the accelerator, Kapitsa was staring at the spectrum on the glass negative, thoughtful.

"Chen, have you experienced any failures since you came to England? How do I feel that no matter what you do, you are very successful? And these successes seem to come easily, without any effort at all."

Chen Muwu felt that Kapiza's next sentence would be a cliché again, and asked him why he was so successful.

But he still underestimated the brain circuit of the Russian, and he couldn't think of what Kapitsa said next: "Although you are the best student of the old crocodile, you are not the best person of James."

James is Chadwick's first name. Kapitsa, who is three years younger than him, has no problem calling him by his first name, but Chen Muwu, who is nearly a round younger than him, always calls him by his last name.

The best student is the best student, yes, but the best man is not the best person, but the best man in a special wedding.

Kapitsa made a pun, as if to show off his best man status.

"Peter, you're right. I really can't compare to you in this point, because in my impression, it seems that the best man has to choose the ugliest one among his friends, in order to bring out the tall and handsome groom. .”

Chen Muwu made a joke with his good friend, but he was thinking about something else.

Kapitsa has already been married, how can he be someone else's best man?

But he couldn't ask directly, because Kapitsa's first wife died a few years ago from the Spanish flu.

Chen Muwu could only guess in his heart, maybe because of the different customs, the British might not shy away from this matter.

On the second day, Aston, who had lent Chen Muwu a vacuum pump and was rewarded by Xiao Chen with a higher precision vacuum pump, also came to London from Cambridge.

As an expert in the study of isotopes, Rutherford invited him to the David Faraday Laboratory just to let this authority confirm that Chen Muwu had indeed discovered hydrogen isotopes.

In fact, the spectral line on the spectrum is very clear, and there is no need for Aston to confirm anything.

He was more like invited by Rutherford to endorse his students.

Everyone in the Cavendish Laboratory went to the Royal Research Institute to build a team, and the old Prague, who was the director, had nothing to do.

In terms of seniority, he can be regarded as Rutherford's teacher.

While Rutherford was growing potatoes in New Zealand, Old Prague was already a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

On the way Rutherford left New Zealand to study in the UK, he also visited Adelaide by ship and asked Old Prague some questions about living in the UK.

But in terms of status, Old Prague is now inferior to Rutherford.

Although everyone is a member of the Royal Society, they are all in charge of a laboratory, but Rutherford will soon take over as the president of the Royal Society, and his Cavendish Laboratory, whether it is funding, talents or The research results are much stronger than the Royal Research Institute.

The only thing old Prague could win against Rutherford was that he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

But there was no way to say this. Once he said it, he was afraid of his old arms and legs, and he couldn't help the fist of the strong New Zealander.

Both Rutherford and Aston called for bringing more deuterium back to the Cavendish Laboratory for research.

The former is still thinking about his bombardment experiment, while the latter wants to put the deuterium nucleus in a mass spectrometer and try to measure some physical and chemical properties of deuterium.

Opening their mouths at the top, and breaking their legs at the bottom, Chadwick and Kapitsa hurriedly started working in this laboratory after undergoing simple training from Chen Muwu.

They had to use these few days to produce the deuterium that the two wanted.

And why didn't Chen Muwu do it himself?
Because unlike Chadwick and Kapitsa, he is a distinguished member of the Royal Society, and he will go to the Royal Society to participate in the report on the discovery of heavy hydrogen nuclei together with Rutherford, Old Prague and Aston. .

Chen Muwu is naturally the keynote speaker of this report.

Rutherford, who presided over the meeting, proudly announced to the participants that this was the first time that the discovery of heavy hydrogen nuclei was announced to the world.

But in fact, on the first day he arrived in London, he asked Chen Muwu to send the news and photos of the discovery of deuterium to the editorial department of "Nature".

Compared to Rutherford's first reaction was whether he could discover the electrically neutral particles in the nucleus from the heavy hydrogen nucleus, the monks present all heaved a sigh of relief after hearing that the heavy hydrogen nucleus had been discovered.

The discovery of deuterium nuclei allows everyone to finally explain why the same very pure pure water has different densities measured around the world.

Some people also draw inferences, since heavy hydrogen nuclei with a mass of 2 relative to the atomic mass exist, are there heavier hydrogen nuclei with a mass of 3?

What is the maximum relative atomic mass of hydrogen isotopes?
Chen Muwu's clumsy method of finding deuterium by evaporating liquid hydrogen at low temperature may not be suitable for tritium.

Because the storage of tritium in hydrogen is very small, 0.016% of the hydrogen atoms on the earth are deuterium, but only ten to the eighteenth power, that is, one part in 100 billion billion is tritium.

If you want to find tritium, you still need to do a miracle, although in Rutherford's idea, bombarding the deuterium target with hydrogen nuclei can't get neutrons.

But he then used deuterium nuclei to bombard the deuterium target, and finally discovered the existence of "super heavy hydrogen" tritium with a relative atomic mass of 3 for the first time.

It's just that the prerequisite for the discovery of tritium is to build an accelerator first.

After introducing the discovery process of heavy hydrogen, Rutherford led everyone to discuss the matter of what name should be given to this heavy hydrogen.

As the discoverer of deuterium, Chen Muwu was the first to express that he had no interest in naming this isotope.

He sat in his seat, watching the discussion of the members of the Royal Society very bored. Their Greek was easy to speak, and they frequently quoted scriptures.

Chen Muwu has always felt that one thing is amazing, that is why different isotopes of hydrogen have different names and symbols, while isotopes of other elements do not have this treatment?
On the science edition of The Times the next day, the title of "The Last Man Who Knows Everything (the last person in the world who knows everything)" was used to report the meeting held by the Royal Society yesterday.

And the person described in this title is of course Chen Muwu.

Chen Muwu was reading the newspaper of the day in the David Faraday laboratory, and a new visitor came to visit.

This one can be regarded as coming from a long way, and he is a little closer than Chen Muwu who came to England from the sea of ​​China.

The Indian with a turban on his head reported his family name in English with a South Asian accent: "Dr. Chen, hello, I am Chandrasekara Raman, from the University of Calcutta, India.

"I listened to your report at the Royal Society yesterday and learned that you are currently conducting research in the Royal Institute, so I came here to visit."

Raman was made a Fellow of the Royal Society as early as 1924, while Old Bragg was elected while teaching at the University of Adelaide.

Neither of these two people had achieved any outstanding academic achievements at the time, but it seemed that the Royal Society was extremely tolerant of them who taught and promoted Wang Hua in several major colonies, and the threshold for membership was very low.

In contrast, if you stay in the UK to do research, it will be very difficult to enter the Royal Society.

Chadwick did not become a Fellow until 1927, and Kapitsa two years later.

After De Broglie, Chen Muwu was once again approached by the Lord.

Raman had been studying the miraculous phenomenon of visible light scattering for a long time, and was intercepted by Chen Muwu.

He never imagined that it was actually Chen Muwu who published his research results in advance and expressed his gratitude to Dr. Chen for solving the problems that had been bothering him.

Of course, Raman’s visit this time is not just to say thank you. As a pioneer in physics education in India, he also wants to discuss with Chen Muwu where the future direction of physics lies.

Hearing this topic, Xiao Chen suddenly became interested. He brought Raman to the laboratory where he discovered deuterium, pointed to the machine surrounded by Chadwick and Kapitsa, and introduced: "Professor Raman, please see, I discovered the first isotope of hydrogen on this machine.

"It's just that this is just an accidental discovery. My original intention to buy this machine was to study the problem of superconductivity under low-temperature physics.

"I think of superconductivity as a mountain of treasures that is understudied and under-understood.

"We can now achieve superconductivity at a temperature of 7 Kelvin, so can we find superconducting materials at 10 Kelvin? With the deepening of research, will the critical temperature of superconductivity be higher in the future? One hundred Kelvin? Two hundred Kelvin? Or even room-temperature superconductivity at [-] Kelvin?"

Since you Indians can fool the world that you have found room-temperature superconducting materials, of course I, Chen Muwu, can fool you Indians in advance!

　Have you eaten the room-temperature superconducting melon made by the third brother recently?I feel more like a fraudulent fund, it belongs to the foundation of the third brother.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)