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“Thank you for asking, Doctor Planck. I’ll get right to it.” Halstead turned to the board behind him and reached up with a ready piece of chalk. “I have assembled all of you here to design and build an atomic bomb for the Reich.” There was a collective pause from those seated, and then a solitary voice asked, “An atomic bomb?” “Yes, Doctor Hahn, an ‘atomic bomb.’ Here’s how it will work.” Halstead turned back to the chalkboard. “As you all know, the atom consists of a dense mass surrounded by orbiting electrons.” Halstead drew a tight cluster of circles and surrounded it with the elliptical orbits of two electrons. “What you don’t know is that the nucleus of the atom consists of two subatomic particles, not merely the proton. The second particle in the nucleus is the neutron.” “What’s a neutron?” “A neutron, Doctor Born, is a particle with a mass similar to that of the proton, eighteen hundred and thirty-nine times that of the electron, to be exact. As its name implies, it has a neutral electrical charge.” Halstead kept his back turned to his audience to hide their raised eyebrows. “The neutron is the key to the bomb. Remember that a neutron has no electrical charge, and can therefore pass unhindered through an atom’s electrical fields and collide with the nucleus. A slow free neutron, which can be freed from radioactive beryllium and slowed by passage through paraffin, that meets with a critical mass of uranium two thirty-five, will cause the uranium atom to split, release tremendous amounts of energy, and emit at least two more free neutrons, which will, in turn, cause neighboring uranium atoms to split and release energy, and thus set off a chain reaction that will create a tremenous explosion. A nuclear explosion of one kilogram of uranium two thirty-five will equal the force of seventeen thousand tons of TNT.” Halstead now dared to turn from the chalkboard with its chain of clusters and arrows, and saw only a cluster of blank stares. “Let me backtrack a bit. Doctor Einstein.” |