Quotes from Richard Rhodes

the Prospectus judges it "quite likely" that methods would be found to extract uranium from lower-grade ores. It mentions thorium as an alternative and much more abundant reactor fuel. (It still is, having not yet been used commercially as reactor fuel.)

Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humankind the nuclear burden.

C. P. Snow, who was also present, remembers the performance as "one of the shortest accounts ever made about a major discovery." When tall and birdlike Chadwick finished speaking he looked over the assembly and announced abruptly, "Now I want to be chloroformed and put to bed for a fortnight.

They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons.

More than any other development, Chadwick's neutron made practical the detailed examination of the nucleus.

The slow, careful checking continued through the morning. A crowd began to gather on the balcony. Szilard arrived, Wigner, Allison, Spedding whose metal eggs had flattened the pile. Twenty-five or thirty people accumulated on the balcony watching, most of them the young physicists who had done the work.

Stanley decided in 1892 to find out if there were limitations on the level of high-voltage power that could be transmitted.

does not even try to give us complete information about the events around us—it gives information about the correlations between

Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn't filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, not always welcome.

hydropower is an obvious first choice for generating electricity. The Willamette Falls Electric Company installed the first AC hydroelectric power station in the United States in 1889 to send power from Oregon City to Portland, Oregon, thirteen miles away.

he wrote in retirement: "Two magnitudes are complementary when the measurement of one of them prevents the accurate simultaneous measurement of the other.

This time," he told Weil, "take the control rod out twelve inches." Weil withdrew the cadmium rod. Fermi nodded and ZIP was winched out as well. "This is going to do it," Fermi told Compton. The director of the plutonium project had found a place for himself at Fermi's side. "Now it will become self-sustaining. The trace [on the recorder] will climb and continue to climb; it will not level off.

Conant in his 1943 secret history thought the "most important" reason the program changed direction in the autumn of 1941 was that "the all-out advocates of a head-on attack on the uranium problem had become more vocal and determined" and mentioned Oliphant's influence first of all.

people are more likely to refrain from violence out of preference for a nonviolent existence than they are to do so out of fear of punishment.

As of January 1945 on any given day about 85 percent of some 864 Alpha calutron tanks operated to produce 258 grams—9 ounces—of 10 percent enriched product; at the same time 36 Beta tanks converted the accumulated Alpha product to 204 grams—7.2 ounces—per day of 80 percent enriched U235, sufficient enrichment to make a bomb.

Generosity is meaningless to a god, who never suffers shortage or want; courage is meaningless to a god, who is immortal and can never suffer permanent injury, and so on. Our virtues and our dignity arise from our mortality, our humanity—and not from any success in being God.

Suddenly Fermi raised his hand. "The pile has gone critical," he announced. No one present had any doubt about it.

Fermi allowed himself a grin. He would tell the technical council the next day that the pile achieved a k of 1.0006.1700 Its neutron intensity was then doubling every two minutes. Left uncontrolled for an hour and a half, that rate of increase would have carried it to a million kilowatts.

Twentieth Century Book of the Dead.

Not testosterone per se but the patriarchal preference for subjecting males to violentization, and their physical advantage in achieving early successful violent performances, explains why men are much more likely than women to be seriously violent.

He waited another minute, then another, and then when it seemed that the anxiety was too much to bear, he ordered 'ZIP in!' Ã¢â'¬Â It was 3:53 P.M. Fermi had run the pile for 4.5 minutes at one-half watt and brought to fruition all the years of discovery and experiment. Men had controlled the release of energy from the atomic nucleus.

Across the next two years, they drilled one disappointing hole after another.

Then, just in time, as in all good melodramas, Dammam No. 7 came through: on 4 March 1938, while the Socal board was still deliberating, No. 7, at a depth of 4,725 feet, started flowing at 1,585 barrels a day. Three days later, the flow was up to more than twice that volume, to 3,690 barrels, and to 3,810 barrels by the end of the month.

Preventing and limiting violence means protecting children from brutalization in a country where physically punishing children continues to be acceptable behavior.