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Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
The history of nuclear power (1985)

AuteurUS DoE
Datumaugustus 1985
Classificatie 6.01.0.40/01 (GESCHIEDENIS ONTWIKKELING KERNENERGIE)
Voorkant

Uit de publicatie:

INTRODUCTION

It is the nature of man to test, to observe, and to dream. The history of nuclear 
energy is the story of a centuries-old dream taking form and substance as 20th 
century man learns to unleash and to control the vast amount of energy stored 
in the tiny atom.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, scholars of ancient Greece developed the idea 
that all matter is composed of tiny, invisible particles called atoms (from the Greek 
word, atomos). The originators of the idea were not scientists in the contemporary 
sense of the word, but developed their theories through philosophical reasoning. 
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientists revived the atomic idea 
based on evidence derived from quantitative experimental data. By 1900, physicists 
were beginning to understand that vast quantities of energy were stored within the 
atom. Ernest Rutherford, a British physicist whose contribution to the theory of the 
basic structure of the atom gained him the title of "father of nuclear science;" wrote 
in 1904:

If it were ever possible to control at will the rate of disintegration of the radio 
elements, an enormous amount of energy could be obtained from a small amount 
of matter.

One year later, Albert Einstein developed the theory of the relationship between 
mass and energy, stated mathematically as E=mc2, or energy is equal to mass 
times the square of the speed of light. Almost 35 years passed, however, before 
Einstein's theory was proven.

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