SPEED OF ATOMS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 2 December 1927, Page 8

SPEED OF ATOMS

AIR SERVICE LECTURE BY SIR ERNEST RUTHERFORD The opening lecture of the winter session of the Air Ministry’s “further education” course was delivered by Sir Ernest Rutherford, president of the Royal Society, whose subject was “Atomic Explosions.” There was a large gathering of members of the staff of the Ministry. Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary of State for Air, who presided, said (he record of that educational organisation showed that its work was expanding; nearly 400 members of the Air Ministry and the Air Force were taking courses in subjects as widely separated as Arabic and horticulture. The preliminary investigations that he had been able to make on the subject of the lecture that evening showed him that in the atom there was a varying number of electrons, which appeared to be continuously engaged in a Schneider Cup race at an incredible pace. He understood that their normal pace was something like 1400 miles a second, and that the electrons followed the practice of the winning British team of taking the corners at a curve rather than abruptly like the Italians.—(Laughter). The presence of Sir Ernest Rutherford, as a representative of Cambridge science, gave him (Sir Samuel Hoare) an opportunity of saying how grateful the Air Ministry and the Air Force were to the University of Cambridge for all the scientific help it had given them in many directions and for the help which it hud also given m recent times in connection with the work of the new University Air Force which was formed at Cambridge. SMALLNESS OF ATOMS. Sir Ernest Rutherford, in the course j-f his Iceture, said the idea of the atomic constitution of mattor had long been entertained by scientists, but it was only within the last 20 years that science bad sucoeetlod in definitely proving it, and ho emphasised the exceeding smallness of the atoms and the gigantic number that were present in even the smallest pieces of matter that could be seen or weighed. Sicence could not soo or detect a single atom or molecule as it existed, but it could detect a single atom if that atom were in some way differentiated from the rest. Fortunately Nature came to their aidin that matter; in the atom which was shot out from radium they had a fast projectile moving at the rate of 10,000 miles a second. Science had reached, as the result of a largo amount of research, the general idea that the atoms of matter wore purely electrical structures, that the forces which controlled and the particles which composed them wore, as far as was known, nothing more than electrical entities; and, therefore, from that point of view the whole material world was a highly complicated collocation of positive and negative electricity. 10,000 MILES A SECOND. Referring to the speed of atoms, the lecturer said that aeroplanes had travelled at the raw of five miles a minute, or, roughly, 300 miles au hour, and one could not but feel that that was an enoromous speed at which man and machine could move through the air. All civilians, he remarked incidentally, congratulated the Air Ministry and every one concerned on the great success that had been achieved in the winning of the Schneider Cup, which he hoped Great Britain would long hold. But when they came to fragments of atoms, they had the enormous speed of 10,000 miles a secobd. In conclusion. Sir Ernest Rutherford dealt with the question of the structure of the atom, and stated that, in his view there was a nucleus within the nucleus. In the radio-active atom there was a system and round the nucleus there were satellites which were not charged, but wore electrically neutral