BATTLE OF THE ALCHEMISTS — COMPTOK 279 



which are not repelled at all, and the great advantage of their 

 capability of use at controllable speeds and quantities. 



The final interest to me, personally, in this type of transmutation, 

 is the fact that it was the first of a group of transmutations pre- 

 dicted by Dr. Van de GraalF in a report which he made to me about 

 3 years ago, and on the basis of which he sought further facilities 

 for developing the high-voltage generator on which he was then 

 experimenting. He not only predicted the transmutation, but also 

 the resultant energy liberation of 16 million volts. He did not pre- 

 dict, for there was no basis for calculating it, how speedy the protons 

 would have to be to effect this transmutation, and I think everyone 

 was surprised to learn that Cockroft and Walton detected it with 

 proton energies as small as 125,000 volts. At 250,000 volts about 1 

 atomic transmutation was found for every thousand million protons 

 which were shot into the lithium. At higher proton velocities the 

 number of transmutations increased. In every case, however, the 

 helium nuclei which were produced had about 8 million volts energy 

 apiece, or 16 million for the pair. It was as if the proton, on 

 entering the lithium nucleus, combined with it to produce 2 helium 

 nuclei with repulsive forces between them so great that they flew 

 ajiart with this tremendous 16-million-volt energy. 



How was Van de Graaff able to predict this energy? How, in 

 fact, can all the energies in atomic transformations be predicted — 

 for they can be predicted in radioactive processes and in the other 

 cases such as described in equations (1), (2), and (3) ? The answer 

 to this question lies in an equation, the product of Einstein's genius, 

 perhaps the most important aspect of his whole theory of relativity. 

 Contrary to the much publicized statement that only 12 people in 

 the world could understand his theory of relativity, this part of the 

 theory is very simple and I think that everyone in this audience 

 can understand it — though })erhaps not understanding the argument 

 through which the conclusion was reached. 



The equation is, simply, 



E=M c^ (4) 



or, Energy = Mass X (velocity of light) ^ 

 or, ergs = grams X 9 (10)-'' 



Being interj)reted, this simply means that mass and energy are 

 interconvertible and that if mass disappears, energy takes its place 

 in accordance with this equation. In more famaliar terms, 2.13 

 (10)'^ calories of energy are liberated for every gram of matter 

 which vanishes. In still more common language, the annihilation 

 of 1 pound of matter would create enough energy to heat 100 mil- 



