I'd like to thank my mum... for having me... and my ca-... *mute* 1 hour and 54 minutes later (approximately)... *unmute* ... but I would never have got here without the brainwork of everyone else in this thread... so thank you everyone :)
Feel a bit naughty taking the win to be honest...
Please wait here. Further instructions could pile up at any time. Thank you.
She worked with Otto Hahn, an exceptional chemist, who was toying around with Uranium. He threw neutrons at it and was expecting some transmutation to elements 'nearby' in the periodic table of elements. Say Radium. But the 'radium' on physical/chemical analysis ( no mean feat ) turned out to be Barium. Barium has 56 protons, Uranium has 92. So no where near each other on the periodic table then.
He wrote to Lise about the result of getting Barium if you bombard Uranium with neutrons. She was then in Sweden, having had fled Germany in the late 1930's. She was of Jewish family heritage even though a Lutheran by professed faith. Her expired passport was overlooked or ignored by a border guard fortunately. Now she had heard of Bohr's 'liquid drop' model of the atomic nucleus which suggested instability in the right circumstances. She took a walk in the snow with her nephew - Otto Frisch - to discuss the findings. Sitting on a log together they sketched out the idea of a liquid drop being progressively disturbed from a drop shape through to barbell-like and then snap ! Two or more pieces. In this instance they deduced the other fission product was probably Krypton, with 36 protons. But as a 'noble' gas it doesn't react chemically and would have not been detected by Hahn. There would be some other neutrons emerging from this nuclear reaction too. Frisch suggested the word 'fission' as he knew someone who was working with cells, and that was a cell biology word for cell division. She wrote back to Hahn explaining her conclusion. They published a paper in Nature together, in the edition of 1st December 1939. Hahn got the Nobel.
Hint #1 - a real person who might be mentioned in a book about the history of physics.
Obvious. Person includes a woman ...
Hint #2 - sometimes what seems to be very little can turn out to be quite a lot.
E = m*c^2, particularly : one-fifth of the rest mass of a proton is turned into kinetic energy when the above reaction occurs. About 200 Mev per fissioned nucleus. Not alot, eh ? Less than a Mars Bar worth of mass can wipe out a city. Or if you like c^2 is a really big number in human terms.
Hint #3 - Success and failure in Sweden.
She worked out the fission mechanism in Sweden, but no Nobel for her.
Hint #4 - some gods have given their names to planets, but what else ?
To Plutonium you can add Uranium and Neptunium. Mercury if you like but that doesn't fission ( short of a supernovae where everything goes to the crapper ). Non-planetary gods & the like abound in the periodic table eg. Thorium, Selenium, Promethium ( well he stole fire from the Gods ).
Hint #5 : It happens all the time in microbe land.
As above.
Any money Anniet is thinking 'crap, what do I do now ? ..... :-) :-) :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
I'd like to thank my mum... for having me... and my ca-... *mute* 1 hour and 54 minutes later (approximately)... *unmute* ... but I would never have got here without the brainwork of everyone else in this thread... so thank you everyone :)
Also the other trigger for the thread - if no one had solved it - was December 1st, that being the 75th anniversary of the publication of the Hahn/Meitner paper in Nature. But y'all knocked it down in a week ! :-)
Other hints were to be :
- solved by relatives sitting on a log. [ Lise and Frisch ]
- one for the Bomb, the other against. [ Hahn worked on it, Lise refused. ]
- it's not a bloke. [ the last ditch clue .... ]
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Lise Meitner? She did spend time in Sweden... I think... and she tended to miss out on recognition a lot.
Congratulations !!!
Man, that was HARD...
anniet, how'd you do that?
Someone, who "spent time in" Sweden, that nobody's ever heard of because she wasn't recognized, a snowy log-sitter, who didn't really quite have anything at all to do with Plutonium long before Fermi made Plutonium and got a Nobel for doing what he did to make it and yet didn't know what he had made or that it was fissionable; later "discovered" by a couple of guys who were working "under" a couple of other guys, one of whom was a Chemist, who got the Nobel prize for it even though they hadn't actually done it or had died of cancer at the age of 40 possibly because of it.
My hat is definitely off to you.
Oh my goodness.
I'm impressed to the point of feeling weak in the knees before obvious GREATNESS.
Someone, who "spent time in" Sweden, that nobody's ever heard of because she wasn't recognized, a snowy log-sitter, who didn't really quite have anything at all to do with Plutonium long before Fermi made Plutonium and got a Nobel for doing what he did to make it and yet didn't know what he had made or that it was fissionable; later "discovered" by a couple of guys who were working "under" a couple of other guys, one of whom was a Chemist, who got the Nobel prize for it even though they hadn't actually done it or had died of cancer at the age of 40 possibly because of it.
@ you all: :)))))))
You see... put like that... *quick lie down with cold compress for head* it looks VERY hard... but just focussing on the words "might be" reminded me of the Wallace/Darwin thing... and when Mike steered us away from Agnetha - but not women... I got curious :) Then there was a disastrous typo in my search bar which I'd rather not talk about and which took me way off target... but I have a nose for unsung heroes :) and heroines... they stick in my head although I don't always remember their names :/ (I didn't remember hers) I thought the person I was thinking of had been born in Germany and had fled from there during the war... and I got lucky :)
I will be back in a bit with LPTP 12 :) I hope it won't be too much of a shambles :/ but I will do my best to emulate the high standards that have been set by you all :)
Please wait here. Further instructions could pile up at any time. Thank you.
*surreptitiously minimize
*surreptitiously minimize wikipedia*
I'd like to thank my mum... for having me... and my ca-... *mute* 1 hour and 54 minutes later (approximately)... *unmute* ... but I would never have got here without the brainwork of everyone else in this thread... so thank you everyone :)
Feel a bit naughty taking the win to be honest...
Please wait here. Further instructions could pile up at any time. Thank you.
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner :
--------------
She worked with Otto Hahn, an exceptional chemist, who was toying around with Uranium. He threw neutrons at it and was expecting some transmutation to elements 'nearby' in the periodic table of elements. Say Radium. But the 'radium' on physical/chemical analysis ( no mean feat ) turned out to be Barium. Barium has 56 protons, Uranium has 92. So no where near each other on the periodic table then.
He wrote to Lise about the result of getting Barium if you bombard Uranium with neutrons. She was then in Sweden, having had fled Germany in the late 1930's. She was of Jewish family heritage even though a Lutheran by professed faith. Her expired passport was overlooked or ignored by a border guard fortunately. Now she had heard of Bohr's 'liquid drop' model of the atomic nucleus which suggested instability in the right circumstances. She took a walk in the snow with her nephew - Otto Frisch - to discuss the findings. Sitting on a log together they sketched out the idea of a liquid drop being progressively disturbed from a drop shape through to barbell-like and then snap ! Two or more pieces. In this instance they deduced the other fission product was probably Krypton, with 36 protons. But as a 'noble' gas it doesn't react chemically and would have not been detected by Hahn. There would be some other neutrons emerging from this nuclear reaction too. Frisch suggested the word 'fission' as he knew someone who was working with cells, and that was a cell biology word for cell division. She wrote back to Hahn explaining her conclusion. They published a paper in Nature together, in the edition of 1st December 1939. Hahn got the Nobel.
Hint #1 - a real person who might be mentioned in a book about the history of physics.
Obvious. Person includes a woman ...
Hint #2 - sometimes what seems to be very little can turn out to be quite a lot.
E = m*c^2, particularly : one-fifth of the rest mass of a proton is turned into kinetic energy when the above reaction occurs. About 200 Mev per fissioned nucleus. Not alot, eh ? Less than a Mars Bar worth of mass can wipe out a city. Or if you like c^2 is a really big number in human terms.
Hint #3 - Success and failure in Sweden.
She worked out the fission mechanism in Sweden, but no Nobel for her.
Hint #4 - some gods have given their names to planets, but what else ?
To Plutonium you can add Uranium and Neptunium. Mercury if you like but that doesn't fission ( short of a supernovae where everything goes to the crapper ). Non-planetary gods & the like abound in the periodic table eg. Thorium, Selenium, Promethium ( well he stole fire from the Gods ).
Hint #5 : It happens all the time in microbe land.
As above.
Any money Anniet is thinking 'crap, what do I do now ? ..... :-) :-) :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: *surreptitiously
Ah - You deserve the Cafe Einstein Nobel Prize !
Congrats again.
Bill
Ha, gotta love leapfrog
Ha, gotta love leapfrog posts. Oh yeah, Anniet is out of the frying pan now. :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Also the other trigger for
Also the other trigger for the thread - if no one had solved it - was December 1st, that being the 75th anniversary of the publication of the Hahn/Meitner paper in Nature. But y'all knocked it down in a week ! :-)
Other hints were to be :
- solved by relatives sitting on a log. [ Lise and Frisch ]
- one for the Bomb, the other against. [ Hahn worked on it, Lise refused. ]
- it's not a bloke. [ the last ditch clue .... ]
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Any money Anniet is
:))))))
Ahem... yes... well... actually... when I do think about it...
erm...
y-e-e-s...
I'm going to go away now and think about what I've done... very very hard...
*surreptitiously maximise wikipedia*
Impressive clues by the way! :)
Please wait here. Further instructions could pile up at any time. Thank you.
RE: Lise Meitner? She did
Congratulations !!!
Man, that was HARD...
anniet, how'd you do that?
Someone, who "spent time in" Sweden, that nobody's ever heard of because she wasn't recognized, a snowy log-sitter, who didn't really quite have anything at all to do with Plutonium long before Fermi made Plutonium and got a Nobel for doing what he did to make it and yet didn't know what he had made or that it was fissionable; later "discovered" by a couple of guys who were working "under" a couple of other guys, one of whom was a Chemist, who got the Nobel prize for it even though they hadn't actually done it or had died of cancer at the age of 40 possibly because of it.
My hat is definitely off to you.
Oh my goodness.
I'm impressed to the point of feeling weak in the knees before obvious GREATNESS.
EDIT: NO PHIL, not you.
RE: I'm impressed to the
Dangit...
Phil
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Yeah ... that's what Chuck
Yeah ... that's what Chuck Connors would have called a 'hip-shot' :
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Someone, who "spent
@ you all: :)))))))
You see... put like that... *quick lie down with cold compress for head* it looks VERY hard... but just focussing on the words "might be" reminded me of the Wallace/Darwin thing... and when Mike steered us away from Agnetha - but not women... I got curious :) Then there was a disastrous typo in my search bar which I'd rather not talk about and which took me way off target... but I have a nose for unsung heroes :) and heroines... they stick in my head although I don't always remember their names :/ (I didn't remember hers) I thought the person I was thinking of had been born in Germany and had fled from there during the war... and I got lucky :)
I will be back in a bit with LPTP 12 :) I hope it won't be too much of a shambles :/ but I will do my best to emulate the high standards that have been set by you all :)
Please wait here. Further instructions could pile up at any time. Thank you.