Nuclear Physics

Prof. Charles H. Holbrow advises students on nuclear physics projects. Among these are the study of gamma-ray emissions from rapidly rotating nuclei radioactive decay chains and analysis of the abundance of naturally occurring radon.. 

A recent educational project that was a demo for a course on the making of the atomic bomb. This was a demonstration of  an exponentially growing chain. Each cycle of launch of the ping-pong balls takes about t = 0.45 s. After each cycle the number of balls doubles (simulating the growth of a chain reaction produced by nuclear fission). If N is the number of doublings then 2^N = 200, the number of balls. Maximum yield is reached in a time T = tN = 0.45 ln(200)/ln(2) = 3.4s. As you can see, it happens quickly!

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