Who Invented Nuclear Energy
No one knows for sure who invented nuclear energy. The process that led to the production of nuclear energy started in the year 1895 when radiation was ionized. Wilhelm Rontgen passed electric current through an evacuated tube and produced X-rays. |
Sponsored Links :
|
In 1896, Pierre and Marie Curie, further tested on Rontgen’s experiment and gave the process the name ‘radioactivity’. In the year 1911, first practical use of a radioactive substance was demonstrated by George de Hevesy. He put the material in food and detected its presence later on with the help of a gold leaf electroscope. By this time, Frederick Soddy had discovered the presence of isotopes in radioactive elements. In 1919, Ernest Rutherford introduced alpha particles taken from radium into nitrogen. He discovered that this resulted in nuclear rearrangement and release of oxygen. Later, Niels Bohr studied in depth the atom and the arrangement of electrons around its nucleus.
1932 saw the discovery of neutron by James Chadwick. Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, in 1939, showed the existence of lighter radioactive elements like barium. Other lighter elements discovered were about half the mass of uranium. This proved that nuclear fission had taken place. The energy that was released from this fission was about 200 million electron volts. The two scientists believed that not only energy but also neutrons were released as a result of the fission.
After this, experiments and studies on nuclear energy and its uses continued and are still continuing to this day. What started out as perhaps a serendipitous discovery, has now turned into a mania for the scientists. We cannot name perhaps one person responsible for the discovery of nuclear energy. But the fact remains that this discovery has been our biggest source of joy and concern.
More Articles :
|
Nuclear power is nuclear energy generated from a nuclear technology that gathers energy from the nuclei of atoms under controlled nuclear reactions. This can be achieved using the process of nuclear fission, nuclear fusion of radioactivity. 
