Isaac Asimov - Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy
Here you can read online Isaac Asimov - Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2000, publisher: University Press of the Pacific, genre: Religion. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy
- Author:
- Publisher:University Press of the Pacific
- Genre:
- Year:2000
- Rating:5 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
In the last 20 years, Isaac Asimov has written more than 150 books, including science fiction and many technical guides to scientific subjects. His prodigious output has made him one of Americas favorite interpreters of the roles of science and technology in shaping mans destiny.
Isaac Asimov: author's other books
Who wrote Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
The Story of Nuclear Energy
Isaac Asimov
ILLUSTRATED EDITION
U. S. Energy Research and Development Administration
Office of Public Affairs
Washington, D.C. 20545
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-189477
Nothing in the history of mankind has opened our eyes to the possibilities of science as has the development of atomic power. In the last 200 years, people have seen the coming of the steam engine, the steamboat, the railroad locomotive, the automobile, the airplane, radio, motion pictures, television, the machine age in general. Yet none of it seemed quite so fantastic, quite so unbelievable, as what man has done since 1939 with the atom ... there seem to be almost no limits to what may lie ahead: inexhaustible energy, new worlds, ever-widening knowledge of the physical universe. Isaac Asimov
ISAAC ASIMOV received his academic degrees from Columbia University and is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. He is a prolific author who has written over 150 books in the past 20 years, including about 20 science fiction works, and books for children. His many excellent science books for the public cover subjects in mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology, such as The Genetic Code, Inside the Atom, Building Blocks of the Universe, Understanding Physics, The New Intelligent Mans Guide to Science, and Asimovs Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology.
In 1965 Dr. Asimov received the James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society for his major contribution in reporting science progress to the public.
A total eclipse of the sun.
VOLUME 1 5 6 11 11 13 17 25 30 35 47 47 50 54 55 57VOLUME 2 69 75 75 76 80 82 86 92 92 95 98 101 107VOLUME 3 117 117 122 127 131 141 146 146 148 150 158 158 163 165The Story of Nuclear Energy
Volume 1
Atomic Weights Energy Electricity
In a way, nuclear energy has been serving man as long as he has existed. It has served all of life; it has flooded the earth for billions of years. The sun, you see, is a vast nuclear engine, and the warmth and light that the sun radiates is the product of nuclear energy.
In order for man to learn to produce and control nuclear energy himself, however (something that did not take place until this century), three lines of investigationatoms, electricity, and energyhad to develop and meet.
We will begin with atoms.
As long ago as ancient Greek times, there were men who suspected that all matter consisted of tiny particles which were far too small to see. Under ordinary circumstances, they could not be divided into anything smaller, and they were called atoms from a Greek word meaning indivisible.
It was not until 1808, however, that this atomic theory was really put on a firm foundation. In that year the English chemist John Dalton (1766-1844) published a book in which he discussed atoms in detail. Every element, he suggested, was made up of its own type of atoms. The atoms of one element were different from the atoms of every other element. The chief difference between the various atoms lay in their mass, or weight.
Dalton was the first to try to determine what these masses might be. He could not work out the actual masses in ounces or grams, for atoms were far too tiny to weigh with any of his instruments. He could, however, determine their relative weights; that is, how much more massive one kind of atom might be than another.
For instance, he found that a quantity of hydrogen gas invariably combined with eight times its own mass of oxygen gas to form water. He guessed that water consisted of combinations of 1 atom of hydrogen with 1 atom of oxygen. (A combination of atoms is called a molecule from a Greek word meaning a small mass, and so hydrogen and oxygen atoms can be said to combine to form a water molecule.)
John Dalton
To account for the difference in the masses of the combining gases, Dalton decided that the oxygen atom was eight times as massive as the hydrogen atom. If he set the mass of the hydrogen atom at 1 (just for convenience) then the mass of the oxygen atom ought to be set at 8. These comparative, or relative, numbers were said to be atomic weights, so that what Dalton was suggesting was that the atomic weight of hydrogen was 1 and the atomic weight of oxygen was 8. By noting the quantity of other elements that combined with a fixed mass of oxygen or of hydrogen, Dalton could work out the atomic weights of these elements as well.
Daltons idea was right, but his details were wrong in some cases. For instance, on closer examination it turned out that the water molecule was composed of 1 oxygen atom and 2 hydrogen atoms. For this reason, the water molecule may be written HO, where H is the chemical symbol for a hydrogen atom, and O for an oxygen atom.
It is still a fact that a quantity of hydrogen combines with eight times its mass of oxygen, so the single oxygen atom must be eight times as massive as the 2 hydrogen atoms taken together. The oxygen atom must therefore be sixteen times as massive as a single hydrogen atom. If the atomic weight of hydrogen is 1, then the atomic weight of oxygen is 16.
At first it seemed that the atomic weights of the various elements were whole numbers and that hydrogen was the lightest one. It made particular sense, then, to consider the atomic weight of hydrogen as 1, because that made all the other atomic weights as small as possible and therefore easy to handle.
The Swedish chemist Jns Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) continued Daltons work and found that elements did not combine in quite such simple ratios. A given quantity of hydrogen actually combined with a little bit less than eight times its mass of oxygen. Therefore if the atomic weight of hydrogen were considered to be 1, the atomic weight of oxygen would have to be not 16, but 15.87.
Jns Jakob Berzelius
As it happens, oxygen combines with more elements (and more easily) than hydrogen does. The ratio of its atomic weight to that of other elements is also more often a whole number. In working out the atomic weight of elements it was therefore more convenient to set the atomic weight of oxygen at a whole number than that of hydrogen. Berzelius did this, for instance, in the table of atomic weights he published in 1828. At first he called the atomic weight of oxygen 100. Then he decided to make the atomic weights as small as possible, without allowing any atomic weight to be less than 1. For that reason, he set the atomic weight of oxygen at exactly 16 and in that case, the atomic weight of hydrogen had to be placed just a trifle higher than 1. The atomic weight of hydrogen became 1.008. This system was retained for nearly a century and a half.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy»
Look at similar books to Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.