Chapter II: Part 2

There are a number of different ways in which a quantity of hydrogen can be heated to very high temperatures—through electric currents, through magnetic fields, through laser beams and so on. As the temperature goes up into the tens of thousands of degrees, the hydrogen atoms (or any atoms) are broken up into free electrons and bare nuclei. Such a mixture of charged particles is called a “plasma”. Ever since physicists have begun to try to work with very hot gases, with fusion energy in mind, they have had to study the properties of such “plasma”, and a whole new science of “plasma physics” has come into existence.

But if you do heat a gas to very high temperatures, it will tend to expand and thin out to uselessness. How can such a super-hot gas be confined in a fixed volume without an enormous gravitational field to hold it together?

An obvious answer would be to place it in a container, but no ordinary container of matter will serve to hold the hot gas. You may think this is because the temperature of the gas will simply melt or vaporize whatever matter encloses it. This is not so. Although the gas is at a very high temperature, it is so thin that it has very little total heat. It does not have enough heat to melt the solid walls of a container. What happens instead is that the hot plasma cools down the moment it touches the solid walls and the entire attempt to heat it is ruined.

What’s more, if you try to invest the enormous energies required to keep the plasma hot despite the cooling effect of the container walls, then the walls will gradually heat and melt. Nor must one wait for the walls to melt and the plasma to escape before finding the attempt at fusion ruined. Even as the walls heat up they liberate some of their own atoms into the plasma and introduce impurities that will prevent the fusion reaction.

Any material container is therefore out of the question.

Fortunately, there is a nonmaterial way of confining plasma. Since plasma consists of a mixture of electrically charged particles, it can experience electromagnetic interactions. Instead of keeping the plasma in a material container, you can surround it by a magnetic field that is designed to keep it in place. Such a magnetic field is not affected by any heat, however great, and cannot be a source of material impurity.

In 1934, the American physicist Willard Harrison Bennett (1903- ) had worked out a theory dealing with the behavior of magnetic fields enclosing plasma. It came to be called the “pinch effect” because the magnetic field pinched the gas together and held it in place.

The first attempt to make use of the pinch effect for confining plasma, with eventual ignition of fusion in mind, was in 1951 by the English physicist Alan Alfred Ware (1924- ). Other physicists followed, not only in Great Britain, but in the United States and the Soviet Union as well.

The first use of the pinch effect was to confine the plasma in a cylinder. This, however, could not be made to work. The situation was too unstable. The plasma was held momentarily, then writhed and broke up.

Attempts were made to remove the instability. The field was so designed as to be stronger at the ends of the cylinder than elsewhere. The particles in the plasma would stream toward one end or another and would then bounce back producing a so-called “magnetic mirror”.

In 1951 the American physicist Lyman Spitzer, Jr. (1914- ) had worked out the theoretical benefits to be derived from a container twisted into a figure-eight shape. Eventually, such devices were built and called “stellarators” from the Latin word for “star”, because it was hoped that it would produce the conditions that would allow the sort of fusion reactions that went on in stars.

All through the 1950s and 1960s, physicists have been slowly inching toward their goal, reaching higher and higher temperatures and holding them for longer and longer periods in denser and denser gases.

In 1969 the Soviet Union used a device called “Tokamak-3” (a Russian abbreviation for their phrase for “electric-magnetic”) to keep a supply of hydrogen-2, a millionth as dense as air, in place while heating it to tens of millions of degrees for a hundredth of a second.

A little denser, a little hotter, a little longer—and controlled fusion might become possible.[5]

BEYOND FUSION

Antimatter

Is there anything that lies beyond fusion?

When hydrogen undergoes fusion and becomes helium, only 0.7% of the original mass of the hydrogen is converted to energy. Is it possible to take a quantity of mass and convert all of it, every bit, to energy? Surely that would be the ultimate energy source. Mass for mass, that would deliver 140 times as much energy as hydrogen fusion would; it would be as far beyond hydrogen fusion as hydrogen fusion is beyond uranium fission.

And, as a matter of fact, total annihilation of matter is conceivable under some circumstances.

In 1928 the English physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902- ) presented a treatment of the electron’s properties that made it appear as though there ought also to exist a particle exactly like the electron in every respect except that it would be opposite in charge. It would carry a positive electric charge exactly as large as the electron’s negative one.

If the electron is a particle, this suggested positively charged twin would be an “antiparticle”. (The prefix comes from a Greek word meaning “opposite”.)

The proton is _not_ the electron’s antiparticle. Though a proton carries the necessary positive charge that is exactly as large as the negative charge of the electron, the proton has a much larger mass than the electron has. Dirac’s theory required that the antiparticle have the same mass as the particle to which it corresponded.

In 1932 C. D. Anderson was studying the impact of cosmic particles on lead. In the process, he discovered signs of a particle that left tracks exactly like those of an electron, but tracks that curved the wrong way in a magnetic field. This was a sure sign that it had an electric charge opposite to that of the electron. He had, in short, discovered the electron’s antiparticle and this came to be called the “positron”.

Positrons were soon detected elsewhere too. Some radioactive isotopes, formed in the laboratory by the Joliot-Curies and by others, were found to emit positive beta particles—positrons rather than electrons. When an ordinary beta particle, or electron, was emitted from a nucleus, a neutron within the nucleus was converted to a proton. When a positive beta particle, a positron, was emitted, the reverse happened—a proton was converted to a neutron.

A positron, however, does not endure long after formation. All about it were atoms containing electrons. It could not move for more than a millionth of a second or so before it encountered one of those electrons. When it did, there was an attraction between the two, since they were of opposite electric charge. Briefly they might circle each other (to form a combination called “positronium”) but only very briefly. Then they collided and, since they were opposites, each cancelled the other.

The process whereby an electron and a positron met and cancelled is called “mutual annihilation”. Not everything was gone, though. The mass, in disappearing, was converted into the equivalent amount of energy, which made its appearance in the form of one or more gamma rays.

(It works the other way, too. A gamma ray of sufficient energy can be transformed into an electron and a positron. This phenomenon, called “pair production”, was observed as early as 1930 but was only properly understood after the discovery of the positron.)

Of course, the mass of electrons and positrons is very small and the amount of energy released per electron is not enormously high. Still, Dirac’s original theory of antiparticles was not confined to electrons. By his theory, any particle ought to have some corresponding antiparticle. Corresponding to the proton, for instance, there ought to be an “antiproton”. This would be just as massive as the proton and would carry a negative charge just as large as the proton’s positive charge.

An antiproton, however, is 1836 times as massive as a positron. It would take gamma rays or cosmic particles with 1836 times as much energy to form the proton-antiproton pair as would suffice for the electron-positron pair. Cosmic particles of the necessary energies existed but they were rare and the chance of someone being present with a particle detector just as a rare super-energetic cosmic particle happened to form a proton-antiproton pair was very small.

Physicists had to wait until they had succeeded in designing particle accelerators that would produce enough energy to allow the creation of proton-antiproton pairs. This came about in the early 1950s when a device called the “Cosmotron” was built at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island in 1952 and another called the “Bevatron” at the University of California in Berkeley in 1954.

Using the Bevatron in 1956, Segrè (the discoverer of technetium who had, by that time, emigrated to the United States), the American physicist Owen Chamberlain (1920- ), and others succeeded in detecting the antiproton.

The antiproton was as unlikely to last as long as the positron was. It was surrounded by myriads of proton-containing nuclei and in a tiny fraction of a second it would encounter one. The antiproton and the proton also underwent mutual annihilation, but having 1836 times the mass, they produced 1836 times the energy that was produced in the case of an electron and a positron.

There was even an “antineutron”, a particle reported in 1956 by the Italian-American physicist Oreste Piccioni (1915- ) and his co-workers. Since the neutron has no charge, the antineutron has no charge either, and one might wonder how the antineutron would differ from the neutron then. Actually, both have a small magnetic field. In the neutron the magnetic field is pointed in one direction with reference to the neutron’s spin; in the antineutron it is pointed in the other.

In 1965 the American physicist Leon Max Lederman (1922- ) and his co-workers produced a combination of an antiproton and an antineutron that together formed an “antideuteron”, which is the nucleus of antihydrogen-2.

This is good enough to demonstrate that if antiparticles existed by themselves without the interfering presence of ordinary particles, they could form “antimatter”, which would be precisely identical with ordinary matter in every way except for the fact that electric charges and magnetic fields would be turned around.

If antimatter were available to us, and if we could control the manner in which it united with matter, we would have a source of energy much greater and, perhaps, simpler to produce than would be involved in hydrogen fusion.

To be sure, there is no antimatter on earth, except for the submicroscopic amounts that are formed by the input of tremendous energies. Nor does anyone know of any conceivable way of forming antimatter at less energy than that produced by mutual annihilation, so that we might say that mankind can never make an energy profit out of it—except that with the memory of Rutherford’s prediction that nuclear energy of any kind could never be tapped, one hesitates to be pessimistic about anything.

The Unknown

Physical theory makes it seem that particles and antiparticles ought to exist in the universe in equal quantities. Yet on earth (and, we can be quite certain, in the rest of the solar system and even, very likely, in the rest of the galaxy) protons, neutrons, and electrons are common, while antiprotons, antineutrons, and positrons are exceedingly rare.

Could it be that when the universe was first formed there were indeed equal quantities of particles and antiparticles but that they were somehow segregated, perhaps into galaxies and “antigalaxies”? If so, there might occasionally be collisions of a galaxy and an antigalaxy with the evolution of vast quantities of energy as mutual annihilation on a cosmic scale takes place.

There are, in fact, places in the heavens where radiation is unusually high in quantity and in energy. Can we be witnessing such enormous mutual annihilation?

Indeed, it is not altogether inconceivable that we may still have new types of forces and new sources of energy to discover. Until about 1900, no one suspected the existence of nuclear energy. Are we quite sure now that nuclear energy brings us to the end, and that there is not a form of energy more subtle still, and greater?

In 1962, for instance, certain puzzling objects called “quasars” were discovered far out in space, a billion light-years or more away from us. Each one shines from 10 to 100 times as brilliantly as an entire ordinary galaxy does, and yet may be no more than a hundred-thousandth as wide as a galaxy.

This is something like finding an object 10 miles across that delivers as much total light as 100 suns.

It is very hard to understand where all that energy comes from and why it should be concentrated into so tiny a volume. Astronomers have tried to explain it in terms of the four interactions now known, but is it possible that there is a fifth greater than any of the four?

If so, it is not impossible that eventually man’s restless brain may come to understand and even utilize it.

FOOTNOTES

[1]See _The First Reactor_, another booklet in this series.

[2]See _Nuclear Reactors_ and _Nuclear Power Plants_, companion booklets
in this series.

[3]See _Breeder Reactors_, another booklet in this series.

[4]See _Thorium—and the Third Fuel_, another booklet in this series.

[5]See _Controlled Nuclear Fusion_, another booklet in this series.

QUOTATION CREDIT

Inside front cover Copyright © by Abelard-Shuman, Ltd., New York.
Reprinted by permission from _Inside the Atom_,
Isaac Asimov, 1966.

READING LIST

Basic Books

_Basic Laws of Matter_ (revised edition), Harrie S. W. Massey and
Arthur R. Quinton, Herald Books, Bronxville, New York, 1965, 178 pp.,
$3.75. Grades 7-9. A nontechnical presentation of atoms and the laws
governing their behavior.

_Biography of Physics_, George Gamow, Harper & Row, Publishers, New
York, 1961, 338 pp., $6.50 (hardback); $2.75 (paperback). Grades 9-12.
A history of theoretical physics.

_Discoverer of X Rays: Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen_, Arnulf K. Esterer,
Julian Messner, New York, 1968, 191 pp., $3.50. Grades 7-10. This
interesting biography includes a brief, but very helpful, pronouncing
gazetteer of the German, Swiss, and Dutch names in the text.

_Ernest Rutherford: Architect of the Atom_, Peter Kelman and A. Harris
Stone, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1969, 72
pp., $3.95. Grades 5-7. A well-done biography of this famous atomic
scientist. Many of the drawings illustrate theoretical ideas very well
for the elementary grades. A glossary is included.

_Enrico Fermi: Atomic Pioneer_, Doris Faber, Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966, 86 pp., $3.95. Grades 5-8. A
biography of the man who built the first reactor.

_Giant of the Atom: Ernest Rutherford_, Robin McKown, Julian Messner,
New York, 1962, 191 pp., $3.50. Grades 7-12. The life and
accomplishments of a great physicist.

_The History of the Atomic Bomb_, Michael Blow, American Heritage
Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1968, 150 pp., $5.95. Grades 5-9.
This sumptuously illustrated history provides an informative
explanation of nuclear physics in addition to comprehensive coverage
of the bomb’s development and use.

_Inside the Atom_, Isaac Asimov, Abelard-Schuman, Ltd., New York,
1966, 197 pp., $4.00. Grades 7-10. This comprehensive, well-written
text explains nuclear energy and its applications.

_Madame Curie: A Biography_, Eve Curie, translated by Vincent Sheean,
Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, 1937, 385 pp., $5.95
(hardback); $0.95 (paperback). Grades 9-12. This superb biography,
which won the 1937 National Book Award for Nonfiction, illustrates
dramatically the full spectrum of Marie Curie’s life.

_Men Who Mastered the Atom_, Robert Silverberg, G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
New York, 1965, 193 pp., $3.49. Grades 7-9. Atomic energy history is
told through the work of pioneer scientists from Thales to present-day
researchers.

_The Neutron Story_, Donald J. Hughes, Doubleday and Company, Inc.,
New York, 1959, 158 pp., out of print. Grades 7-9. A substantial and
interesting account of neutron physics.

_Niels Bohr: The Man Who Mapped the Atom_, Robert Silverberg, MacRae
Smith Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1965, 189 pp., $3.95.
Grades 8-12. An exciting, suspenseful, and humorous biography of one
of the pioneers in atomic energy. Includes a glossary and references.

_The Questioners: Physicists and the Quantum Theory_, Barbara Lovett
Cline, Crowell Collier and MacMillan, Inc., New York, 1965, 274 pp.,
$5.00 (hardback); available in paperback with the title _Men Who Made
A New Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory_, New American
Library, Inc., New York, $0.75. Grades 9-12. An exceptionally
well-delineated and personable account of the development of the
quantum theory by physicists in the first quarter of this century.

_The Restless Atom_, Alfred Romer, Doubleday and Company, Inc., New
York, 1960, 198 pp., $1.25. Grades 9-12. A stimulating nonmathematical
account of the classic early experiments that advanced knowledge about
atomic particles.

_Roads to Discovery_, Ralph E. Lapp, Harper and Row, Publishers, New
York, 1960, 191 pp., out of print. Grades 10-12. Historical survey of
nuclear physics beginning with Roentgen’s discovery of X rays and
concluding with the discoveries of the rare elements.

_Secret of the Mysterious Rays: The Discovery of Nuclear Energy_,
Vivian Grey, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1966, 120 pp.,
$3.95. Grades 4-8. This outstanding history of nuclear research from
Roentgen to Fermi is dramatically presented. The uncertainty of the
unknown, the accidental discovery and the often lengthy and tedious
research are woven in this story of scientists from around the world
who pooled their knowledge and experience to unlock “the secrets of
the mysterious rays”.

_Wilhelm Roentgen and the Discovery of X Rays_, Bern Dibner, Franklin
Watts, Inc., New York, 1968, 149 pp., $2.95. Grades 5-8. This detailed
biography, illustrated with line drawings, historical photographs, and
papers, is a fine addition to Watts’ “Immortals of Science” Series.

_Working with Atoms_, Otto R. Frisch, Basic Books, Inc., New York,
1965, 96 pp., $4.95. Grades 9-12. Dr. Frisch presents a history of
nuclear energy research and provides experiments for the reader. He
gives a personal account of the pioneering work in which he and Lise
Meitner explained the splitting of uranium and introduced the term
“nuclear fission”.

Advanced Books

_An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence_, Herbert
Childs, E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., New York, 1968, 576 pp.,
$12.95. This well-written, scientifically accurate, and very
interesting biography captures the excitement of Lawrence’s life.
Ernest Lawrence was the inventor of the cyclotron, a major member of
the wartime atomic energy development, and the director of the
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

_The Atom and Its Nucleus_, George Gamow, Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1961, 153 pp., $1.25. A popular-level
discussion of nuclear structure and the applications of nuclear
energy.

_Atomic Energy for Military Purposes_, Henry D. Smyth, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1945, 308 pp., $4.00. A
complete account of the wartime project that developed the first
nuclear weapons and of the considerations that prompted their use.

_Atomic Quest_, Arthur H. Compton, Oxford University Press, Inc., New
York, 1956, 370 pp., $7.95. A personal narrative of the research that
led to the release of atomic energy on a useful scale by a scientist
who played a principal part in the atomic bomb project during World
War II.

_The Atomists_ (_1805-1933_), Basil Schonland, Oxford University
Press, Inc., New York, 1968, 198 pp., $5.60. This book, which can be
understood by anyone who has had a high school physics course,
presents atomic theory development from Dalton through Bohr. It
achieves a good balance between popular treatments and highly
technical works without slighting the technical aspects.

_Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi_, Laura Fermi, Chicago
University Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1954, 267 pp., $5.00 (hardback);
$2.45 (paperback). Laura Fermi writes about her husband, Enrico Fermi,
the physicist who led the group that built the first nuclear reactor.

_The Born-Einstein Letters: The Correspondence Between Albert Einstein
and Max and Hedwig Born from 1916 to 1955_, commentaries by Max Born,
translated by Irene Born, Walker and Company, 1971, 240 pp., $8.50.
These interesting letters reveal the scientific and personal lives of
these two atomic scientists.

_Einstein: His Life and Times_, Philipp Frank, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
New York, 1953, 298 pp., $6.95. A brilliant biography that reveals the
richness of Einstein’s life and work and the tremendous impact he made
upon physics.

_Enrico Fermi, Physicist_, Emilio Segrè, Chicago University Press,
Chicago, Illinois, 1970, 288 pp., $6.95. This biography tells of
Enrico Fermi’s intellectual history, achievements, and his scientific
style. The scientific problems faced or solved by Fermi are explained
in layman’s terms. Emilio Segrè was a friend and scientific
collaborator who worked with Fermi for many years.

_An Introduction to Physical Science: The World of Atoms_ (second
edition), John J. G. McCue, The Ronald Press Company, New York, 1963,
775 pp., $9.50. This textbook was written for college humanities
students.

_J. J. Thomson: Discoverer of the Electron_, George Thomson, Doubleday
and Company, Inc., New York, 1966, 240 pp., $1.45. This biography,
written by J. J. Thomson’s son, describes his research at the famed
Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England.

_John Dalton and the Atom_, Frank Greenaway, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, New York, 1966, 256 pp., $7.50. A biography for the general
reader and the high school science student. Dalton is famous for his
development of chemical combinations based on atomic theory. This
provided the basis for modern structural theories of chemistry.

_John Dalton and the Atomic Theory: The Biography of a Natural
Philosopher_, Elizabeth C. Patterson, Doubleday and Company, Inc., New
York, 1970, 320 pp., $6.95 (hardback); $1.95 (paperback). The drama of
Dalton’s life—his rigorous self-teaching, scientific work, and
struggle to overcome class barriers in 19th century England—is well
presented. Quotations from letters, diaries, and published works give
a clear picture of Dalton’s atomic theory research and his time.

_Man-made Transuranium Elements_, Glenn T. Seaborg, Prentice Hall,
Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1963, 120 pp., $6.95 (hardback);
$2.95 (paperback). The discovery, properties, and applications of
elements heavier than uranium are considered in this book, which is
designed as an introduction to the subject. Glenn Seaborg was
co-discoverer of nine of the twelve transuranium elements.

_The Nature of Matter: Physical Theory from Thales to Fermi_, Ginestra
Amaldi, translated by Peter Astbury, Chicago University Press,
Chicago, Illinois, 1966, 332 pp., $5.95. A nontechnical history of
atomic energy.

_Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by His Friends and Colleagues_,
S. Rozental (Editor), John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1967, 355
pp., $5.95. An articulate and scholarly biography by the friends and
co-workers of this outstanding atomic pioneer.

_Niels Bohr: The Man, His Science, and the World They Changed_, Ruth
Moore, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1966, 436 pp., $7.95. An
interesting biography of one of the pioneers in the study of the
internal structure of the atom.

_Otto Hahn: My Life_, Otto Hahn, translated by Ernest Kaiser and
Eithne Wilkins, Herder and Herder, Inc., New York, 1970, 240 pp.,
$6.50. Autobiography of the man who discovered that the atom could be
split.

_Otto Hahn: A Scientific Autobiography_, Otto Hahn, Willy Ley, editor
and translator, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1966, 320 pp.,
$9.95. Otto Hahn, winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize for his work in
atomic fission, reviews the pioneer days in which a new science was
created, and the role he played in its development.

_Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations_, Werner Heisenberg,
translated by Arthur J. Pomerans, Harper and Row, Publishers, New
York, 1970, 247 pp., $7.95. Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Prize
physicist, presents his autobiography in the form of conversations
with such men as Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Ernest
Rutherford, Otto Hahn, and Enrico Fermi.

_Physics for Poets_, Robert H. March, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New.
York, 1970, 302 pp., $7.50. A physics textbook for nonscience
students. The book covers certain developments of classical mechanics,
relativity, and atomic and quantum physics. With this book the author
won the 1971 American Institute of Physics—U. S. Steel Foundation
Science Writing Award in Physics and Astronomy.

_Sourcebook on Atomic Energy_ (third edition), Samuel Glasstone, Van
Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1967, 883 pp., $15.00. An
excellent standard reference work, written for both scientists and the
general public.

_The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story_, Peter Michelmore,
Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1969, 273 pp., $6.95. Oppenheimer’s
complex personality is delineated in this well-written biography. In
the bibliography is a list of books that Oppenheimer felt “had done
the most to shape his vocational attitude and philosophy of life”.

_The World of the Atom_, 2 volumes, Henry A. Boorse and Lloyd Motz
(Eds.), Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1966, 1873 pp.,
$35.00. Contains the actual text of landmark documents in the history
of atomic physics, each preceded by commentary that places it in the
context of the discoverer’s personal life and in the conditions
prevailing in science and in society in his time.

Photo Credits

Page facing inside The “Horsehead” Nebula in Orion. Hale
cover Observatories.
Author’s Photo Jay K. Klein
Contents page Lick Observatory
116 Samuel A. Goudsmit
118 From _Atoms in the Family: My Life With Enrico
Fermi_, Laura Fermi, 1954. Copyright © by the
University of Chicago Press.
120 Top row, left, Institut fur Radium-forschung und
Kemphysik, right, Lotte Meitner-Graff, middle
row, left, Nobel Institute, right, Ernest Orlando
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; bottom row, right,
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory,
left, P. H. Abelson.
123 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
130 Top, Ike Verne; bottom, Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.
132 & 133 Letter and Roosevelt picture from the Franklin D.
Roosevelt Library; Johan Hagemeyer.
136 & 137 Argonne National Laboratory
141 U. S. Navy
143 Right, Westinghouse Electric Corporation
145 Argonne National Laboratory
152 Lick Observatory
155 Gulf Energy and Environmental Systems
156 Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
158 Nobel Institute
159 Left, C. D. Anderson; right, Nobel Institute.
161 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

★ U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1972 - 747-189/2

The U. S. Atomic Energy Commission publishes this series of information booklets for the general public. These booklets explain the many uses of nuclear energy.

The booklets are listed below by subject category.

General Interest

WAS-009 Atomic Energy and Your World
WAS-002 A Bibliography of Basic Books on Atomic Energy
WAS-004 Computers
WAS-008 Electricity and Man
WAS-006 Nuclear Terms, A Glossary
WAS-013 Secrets of the Past: Nuclear Energy Applications in Art and
Archaeology

The Environment

WAS-414 Nature’s Invisible Rays
WAS-204 Nuclear Power and the Environment

Biology

WAS-102 Atoms in Agriculture
WAS-105 The Genetic Effects of Radiation
WAS-107 Radioisotopes in Medicine
WAS-109 Your Body and Radiation

Physics

WAS-401 Accelerators
WAS-403 Controlled Nuclear Fusion
WAS-404 Direct Conversion of Energy
WAS-416 Inner Space: The Structure of the Atom
WAS-406 Lasers
WAS-407 Microstructure of Matter
WAS-411 Power from Radioisotopes

Chemistry

WAS-303 The Atomic Fingerprint: Neutron Activation Analysis
WAS-302 Cryogenics, The Uncommon Cold
WAS-306 Radioisotopes in Industry

Nuclear Reactors

WAS-502 Atomic Power Safety
WAS-513 Breeder Reactors
WAS-503 The First Reactor
WAS-505 Nuclear Power Plants
WAS-507 Nuclear Reactors
WAS-508 Radioactive Wastes

Members of the general public may obtain free, single copies of six titles of their choice. Librarians and teachers may obtain free a complete set of the booklets. These requests should be made on school or library stationery. Those wishing to obtain larger quantities may purchase them if stocks are available. Orders for booklets and inquiries on prices and availability should be directed to:

USAEC—Technical Information Center, P. O. Box 62, Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Comments are invited regarding this booklet and others in the series.

U. S. ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION
Office of Information Services

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