234 Master Minds of Modern Science 



A father was angry. He wrote : 



I regret to see you are determined to carry out your experi- 

 ment. Perhaps if you were a married man with children and 

 not so callous you would not be so keen on the possible destruc- 

 tion of the human race. Oh ! you must be hard to have no 

 pity for those with loved ones. May God curse you if you 

 carry out your experiment ! 



The world remained uninjured, but if experiments such 

 as these do in the long run lead to the industrial use of 

 atomic energy human life will surely be revolutionized, 

 for there is enough energy in half a pound of lead — if it 

 could be released — to drive a fifty-thousand-ton steamer 

 across the Atlantic or to carry a flying-machine round 

 the world. Dr Aston says : 



If we could transmute hydrogen into helium we should pro- 

 duce energy in quantities which, for any sensible amount of 

 matter, are prodigious beyond the dreams of fiction. I calcu- 

 late that for one gram-atom of hydrogen (the quantity in a 

 quarter of an ounce of water) the energy exceeds a quarter of 

 a million horse-power hours. So in a tumbler of water lies 

 enough power to drive the Mauretania. The reason why there 

 is so much power in the atom is that while the dimensions 

 of its nucleus are almost inconceivably small, yet the forces 

 binding together its component parts are gigantic and to be 

 measured in millions of volts. 



The latest attempt to split the atom is being made by 

 Dr Lange and two other German scientists at the top 

 of Monte Generoso, on the shores of Lake Lugano. Since 

 it would cost millions of marks to obtain the necessary 

 tension in a laboratory, Dr Lange has hit on the idea 

 of harnessing lightning, and has constructed a station 

 with a cable earthed at one end and insulated at the other 

 by a double chain of one hundred and sixty steatite 

 insulators weighing together five thousand pounds. 



