By: Deanna Thabatah, James Roussel, Matt Baird, Amelia Craver

He

was born on October 20th, 1891 in Bollington, England. Died July 4th, 1974 in Cambridge, England at the age of 82 For four years, James Chadwick was a prisoner of war in Germany. When World War I ended, he returned to his native England to rejoin the mentor of his undergraduate days, Ernest Rutherford. He was the scientist who discovered the neutron.

The previous atomic model created by Rutherford in the 1920s had concluded that atoms were composed of at least two components, a negatively charged electron and a nucleus of positively charged protons. James Chadwick realized that the atomic mass did not add up with the mass of the protons, yet it had accounted for the positive charge. Due to these inconclusive results Chadwick proposed that there was another particle in the nucleus with a similar weight to protons, but contained no charge. These particles would become known as neutrons, when they are discovered in 1932. Chadwick found these neutrons by sending particles into Beryllium, the particles that did not make it thought where the neutrons. Chadwick determined these particles had no charge by doing a series of calculations. This was when it was established that an atom contained three parts. This also accounted for the total atomic mass. Through the experiment described above he concluded that the particle that was not identified was both neutral and slightly larger than a proton, so he called it a neutron.

Chadwick incorporated a new part to the atomic model, by finding the third particle that made up an atom. He also resolved the flaw of the atomic mass not adding up. The proton and neutron added up to the appropriate mass and charge.

 Chadwicks

discovery advanced experimental work for all scientists. Since neutrons have no electrical charge, any neutrons fired from a source has the ability to go through the deep layers of materials and to go into the nuclei of the target atoms. After Chadwicks work, scientists worldwide began bombardment of all types of materials with neutrons. It was discovered that when Uranium was a target, nuclear fission becomes possible, resulting in nuclear weapons and powerplants.

Because of Chadwick's work, physicists soon found that the neutron made an ideal "bullet" for bombarding other nuclei. Unlike charged particles, it was not repelled by similarly-charged particles and could smash right into the nucleus. Before long, neutron bombardment was applied to the uranium atom, splitting its nucleus and releasing the huge amounts of energy predicted by Einstein's equation E = mc2.P

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outreach.phy.cam.ac.uk/camphy/neutron/ne utron2_1.htm

Only three years after the discovery of the neutron, Chadwick was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1935. He was lured away from Cambridge to accept the chair in physics at Liverpool University, where he oversaw the construction of the first cyclotron in England. As World War II broke out, Chadwick played a prominent role in the effort to create the atomic bomb, both in England, and, beginning in 1943, as the leader of the British effort on the Manhattan Project . Chadwick returned to his chair in Liverpool in 1946, but soon thereafter he accepted an offer from his alma mater, the College of Gonville and Caius at Cambridge, to serve as its master, a post he held until his retirement in 1958.

Neither would he:

 Brown,

Andrew (1997). The Neutron and the Bomb. New York: Oxford University Press. "Discovery Of The Neutron." N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. http://www.ph.surrey.ac.uk/partphys/chapt er2/Neutron.html "The Experiment - Chadwick Experiment." The Experiment - Chadwick Experiment. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <https://sites.google.com/site/chadwickexp eriment/home>.