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Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. Fission is a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei and
The nucleus of an atom consists of neutrons and protons, which in turn are the manifestation of more elementary particles, called quarks, that are held in association by the nuclear strong force in certain stable combinations of hadrons, called baryons. The nuclear strong force extends far enough from each baryon so as to bind the neutrons and ...
The definition by the IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) states that a chemical element can only be recognized as discovered if a nucleus of it has not decayed within 10 −14 seconds. This value was chosen as an estimate of how long it takes a nucleus to acquire electrons and thus display its chemical properties. [20] [e]
The first two reactions that the Berlin group had observed were light elements created by the breakup of uranium nuclei; the third, the 23-minute one, was a decay into the real element 93. [103] On returning to Copenhagen, Frisch informed Bohr, who slapped his forehead and exclaimed "What idiots we have been!"
Hydrogen was known to be the lightest element, and its nuclei presumably the lightest nuclei. Now, because of all these considerations, Rutherford decided that a hydrogen nucleus was possibly a fundamental building block of all nuclei, and also possibly a new fundamental particle as well, since nothing was known to be lighter than that nucleus.
The precision measurement made by Leonard Ornstein, the director of Utrecht's Physical Laboratory, showed that the spin of nitrogen nucleus must be equal to one. However, if the nitrogen-14 (14 N) nucleus was composed of 14 protons and 7 electrons, an odd number of spin-1/2 particles, then the resultant nuclear spin should be half-integer ...
So, element 105 was named dubnium, and element 106 was named seaborgium. The elements were placed in the periodic table’s seventh row, which is above the row of lanthanides and the row of actinides.
Thomson in 1897 was the first to suggest that one of the fundamental units of the atom was more than 1,000 times smaller than an atom, suggesting the subatomic particle now known as the electron. Thomson discovered this through his explorations on the properties of cathode rays.