Word: electronic
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Experimental physicists have found that the electron has an intrinsic mass or "weight" of about .0000000000000000000000000009 gram. This quantity is usually represented by the convenient symbol m. Both experimental and mathematical physicists have regarded m as a major constant of nature, a foundation stone of the universe...
...experimenting with a peculiar particle which showed up in the cosmic rays reaching earth. It appeared that this "X-particle" had a considerably higher mass than m, so Dr. Anderson, who had a natural and profound respect for the constancy of m, was quite sure it was not an electron. Jabez Curry Street of Harvard measured the X-particle's mass at 130 times m, although he said it might be subject to a 25% error either...
Some weeks ago George Eric MacDonnell Jauncey got a hunch that the X-particle was originally an ordinary electron whose mass had somehow been increased. He imagined what would happen if a high-energy cosmic ray photon struck an electron in the upper atmosphere. Most of the transferred energy would simply give the electron a high-velocity kick. But some of it might be converted into matter which the electron would absorb, increasing its mass. The increase might be any amount at all, depending on the initial energy of the cosmic ray and the variable quantity of matter produced...
...Hultgren has also developed an electron bombardment furnace in which small samples of metallic alloys are heated by the impact of electrons at high velocity. This electron bombardment furnace is capable of heating several grams of metal to a temperature of 3000 degrees Centigrade, and its limiting high temperature is set by the lack of suitable high melting crucibles to contain the sample under study rather than by any inherent limitation in the apparatus itself. This furnace makes possible the experimental investigation of many alloys which were formerly very difficult to melt under the controlled conditions necessary for scientific research...
Nuclear Capture. The atom consists of a tough, massive nucleus with one or more electrons spinning around it. For long years physicists assumed that an outside electron never fell into its own nucleus. At Ohio State University, Dr. Marion Llewellyn Pool bombarded silver with various projectiles, made it artificially radioactive. Thirty-five times more gamma rays than electrons spurted out of the radioactive silver. The only way Dr. Pool could explain this abnormally high ratio was by assuming that the nucleus had captured one of its own outside electrons...