Enrico Fermi and his discovery (стр. 1 из 3)
Tyumen State University
Foreign Languages Department for Science
Enrico Fermi and his discovery
Submitted by: E.Chaevskaya
Supervisor: L.V. Skorokhodova
Senior Lecture
Tyumen, 2007
Contens
Chapter 1. Biography pp 2 - 7
Physics in Rome p 2
Nobel Prize & The Manhattan Project p 4
Post-War Work p 5
Personal life p 7
Chapter 2. Fermi's golden rule pp 7 – 8
Chapter 3. Discovery of fermium pp 8 – 11
Facts p 8
History p 9
Binary compaunds p 10
Basic facts p 10
Isotope p 10
Notable characteristics p 11
Annotation
My course paper is headlined “Enrico Fermi and his discovery”. I used next source: internet. The purpose of my work is to describe discovery of the fermium made by Enrico Fermi.
My work consist of three parts. I start by saying about life Enrico Fermi and his achievement. In the second part I say about Fermi's golden rule. And In the third part I say about discovery of the fermium and its chemical and physical properties.
To make the conclusion I want to say that Enrico Fermi was the famous and successful scientist. And he made a great contribution in the development of the world science.
Аннотация
Моя курсовая работа называется «Энрико Ферми и его открытие. Я использовала следующий источник – Интернет. Цель моей работы – описать открытие фермия Энрико Ферми.
Моя работа состоит из трех частей. Я начинаю говорить о жизни Энрико Ферми и его достижениях. Во второй части я рассказываю о Золотом правиле Ферми. И в третьей части я говорю об открытии фермия и его химических и физических свойствах.
В заключении Я хочу сказать о том что Энрико Ферми был известным и успешным ученым. И он внес большой вклад в развитие мировой науки.
"With Fermium in your blood, you won't live long!"
Chapter 1. BiographyPhysics in Rome
Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy on 29th September, 1901. His father was Alberto Fermi, a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and his mother was Ida de Gattis. As a young boy he enjoyed learning physics and mathematics and shared his interests with his brother Giulio. When Giulio died unexpectedly of a throat abscess in 1915, Enrico was distraught, and immersed himself into scientific study to distract himself. Later, Enrico befriended another scientifically inclined student named Enrico Persico, and the two together engaged in scientific projects such as building gyroscopes, and measuring the magnetic field of the earth. He attended a local grammar school, and his early aptitude for mathematics and physics was recognized and encouraged by his father's colleagues, among them A. Amidei. In 1918, he won a fellowship of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He spent four years at the University of Pisa, gaining his doctor's degree in physics in 1922, with Professor Puccianti.
Fermi's advisor was Luigi Puccianti. In 1924 Fermi spent a semester in Göttingen, and then stayed for a few months in Leiden with Paul Ehrenfest. From January 1925 to the autumn of 1926 he stayed at the University of Florence. In 1926, Fermi discovered the statistical laws, nowadays known as the «Fermi statistics». When he was only 24 years old, Fermi took a professorship in Rome (the first for atomic physics in Italy, created for him by professor Orso Mario Corbino, director of the Institute of Physics). Corbino helped Fermi in selecting his team, which soon was joined by notable minds like Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Franco Rasetti and Emilio Segrè. During their time in Rome, Fermi and his group made important contributions to many practical and theoretical aspects of physics. Some of these include the theory of beta decay, and the discovery of slow neutrons, which was to prove pivotal for the working of nuclear reactors. His group also systematically bombarded elements with neutrons, and during their experiments with uranium, narrowly missed observing nuclear fission. At that time, fission was thought to be not improbable. While people expected elements with higher atomic number to form from neutron bombardment of lighter elements, nobody expected neutrons to have enough energy to actually split a heavier atom into two light element fragments. However, the chemist Ida Noddack had criticised Fermi's work and had suggested that some of his experiments could have produced lighter elements. At the time, Fermi dismissed this possibility on the basis of calculations.
Fermi was well-known for his simplicity in solving problems. Whenever possible, he avoided complicated mathematics and obtained quick results based on order of magnitude estimates. This quality was acknowledged by and influenced many physicists who worked with him, such as Hans Bethe, who spent two semesters working with Fermi in the early 1930s. Fermi also meticulously recorded his calculations in notebooks, and later used to solve many new problems that he encountered based on these earlier known problems.
When Fermi submitted his famous paper on beta decay to the prestigious journal Nature, the journal's editor turned it down because "it contained speculations which were too remote from reality". Thus, Fermi saw the theory published in Italian and in German before it was published in English. Nature eventually did publish Fermi's report on beta decay on January 16, 1939.
He never forgot this experience and he always speaks: "Never be first; try to be second".
Nobel Prize & The Manhattan Project
Fermi remained in Rome until 1938.
In 1938, Fermi won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons".
After Fermi received the Nobel prize in Stockholm, he, his wife Laura, and their children emigrated to New York. This was mainly because of the anti-Semitic laws promulgated by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini which threatened Laura, who was Jewish.
Soon after his arrival in New York, Fermi began working at Columbia University.
In 1938, Fermi was without doubt the greatest expert on neutrons, and he continued his work on this topic on his arrival in the United States, where he was soon appointed Professor of Physics at Columbia University, N.Y. (1939-1942).
In 1944, Fermi became American citizen, and at the end of the war (1946) he accepted a professorship at the Institute for Nuclear Studies of the University of Chicago, a position which he held until his untimely death in 1954. There he turned his attention to high-energy physics, and led investigations into the pion-nucleon interaction.
During the last years of his life Fermi occupied himself with the problem of the mysterious origin of cosmic rays, thereby developing a theory, according to which a universal magnetic field - acting as a giant accelerator - would account for the fantastic energies present in the cosmic ray particles.
Professor Fermi was the author of numerous papers both in theoretical and experimental physics. Several papers published in Rend. Accad. Naz. Lincei, 1927-28, deal with the statistical model of the atom (Thomas-Fermi atom model) and give a semiquantitative method for the calculation of atomic properties. 1934.
The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Fermi for his work on the artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. The first paper on this subject was published by him in 1934. Fermi was member of several academies and learned societies in Italy and abroad. As lecturer he was always in great demand (he has also given several courses at the University of Michigan and Stanford University, Calif.). He was the first recipient of a special award of $50,000 - which now bears his name - for work on the atom.
Post-War Work
Fermi was widely regarded as the only physicist of the twentieth century who excelled both theoretically and experimentally. The well-known historian of physics, C. P. Snow, says about him, "If Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom. Fermi's ability and success stemmed as much from his appraisal of the art of the possible, as from his innate skill and intelligence. He disliked complicated theories, and while he had great mathematical ability, he would never use it when the job could be done much more simply. He was famous for getting quick and accurate answers to problems which would stump other people. An instance of this was seen during the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. He estimated that the blast was greater than 10 kilotons of TNT.Later on, this method of getting approximate and quick answers through back of the envelope calculations became informally known as the 'Fermi method'.
After the war, Fermi served for a short time on the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, a scientific committee chaired by Robert Oppenheimer. After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, he, along with Isidor Rabi, wrote a strongly worded report for the committee which opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on moral and technical grounds. But Fermi also participated in preliminary work on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos as a consultant, and along with Stanislaw Ulam, calculated that the amount of tritium needed for Edward Teller's model of a thermonuclear weapon would be prohibitive.
In his later years, Fermi did important work in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons. He was also known to be an inspiring teacher at the University of Chicago, and was known for his attention to detail, simplicity, and careful preparation for a lecture. On November 28, 1954, Fermi died at the age of 53 of stomach cancer in Chicago, Illinois and was interred there in Oak Woods Cemetery. As Eugene Wigner wrote: "Ten days before Fermi had died he told me, 'I hope it won't take long".
A recent poll by Time magazine listed Fermi among the top twenty scientists of the century.
The Fermilab particle accelerator and physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, is named after him in loving memory from the physics community.
Fermi 1 & Fermi 2 nuclear power plants in Newport, Michigan are also named after him.
In 1952, element 100 on the periodic table of elements was isolated from the debris of a nuclear test. In honor of Fermi's contributions to the scientific community, it was named fermium after him.
Personal life
In 1928, Fermi married Laura Capon and later had a son Giulio Fermi (1936-1997) and a daughter Nella Fermi Weiner (1931-1995). His son later worked with the Nobel laureate Max Perutz on the structure of hemoglobin.
Chapter 2. Fermi's golden rule
In quantum physics, Fermi's golden rule is a way to calculate the transition rate (probability of transition per unit time) from one energy eigenstate of a quantum system into a continuum of energy eigenstates, due to a perturbation.
We consider the system to begin in an eigenstate
of a given Hamiltonian H0. We consider the effect of a perturbing Hamiltonian H'. If H' is time-independent, the system goes only into those states in the continuum that have the same energy as the initial state. If H' is oscillating as a function of time with an angular frequency 
, the transition is into states with energy that differs by 
from the energy of the initial state. In both cases, the one-to-many transition probability per unit of time from the state 
to a set of final states 
is given, to first order in the perturbation, by: 
where ρ is the density of final states, and < f | H' | i > is the matrix element of the perturbation, H', between the final and initial states.
Fermi's golden rule is valid when the initial state has not been significantly depleted by scattering into the final states.
The most common way to derive the equation is to start with time-dependent perturbation theory and to take the limit for absorption under the assumption that the time of the measurement is much larger than the time needed for the transition.
Although named after Fermi, most of the work leading to the Golden Rule was done by Dirac who formulated an almost identical equation, including the three components of a constant, the matrix element of the perturbation and an energy difference.
Chapter 3. Discovery of fermium.
Facts:
Atomic Mass 257.1
Protons/Electrons 100
Nuetrons 157
Type Solid
Class Transitional metal
Group Actinide
Melting Temp. 2781
| Oxidation State: | +3 |
| Electron Shell Configuration: |