Dr Ernest Walton with Cockcroft-Walton apparatus

Dr Ernest Ts Walton in the cabinet (marked E) into which the high-velocity protons emerge and strike the target of lithium, producing on a fluorescent screen bright scintillations which indicate that helum particles are being driven out of the lithium nucleus - the lithium nucleus appearing to break up into two helium nuclei. Physicists Walton and J D Cockcroft developed the Cockcroft-Walton accelerator in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University to artificially accelerate atomic particles to high energies. They observed the resultant splitting of atoms when protons from hydrogen were fired at high speeds at a lithium target

Accelerator Atom Atomic Atoms Cavendish Cockcroft Physicists Splitting Walton

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