Chen explained to Eddington in detail every step of his upcoming chemical experiment, and it took a lot of effort to persuade the latter to agree that only nitrogen and deuterium should be used to synthesize deuterated ammonia, and the rest of the hydrochloric acid and distilled water should be ready-made, rather than being prepared one by one.

Agreeing with the idea does not mean that Eddington agrees with this approach, but he still insists on the simple idea that the more deuterium atoms on the ammonium chloride target, the better, and the greater the probability of being bombarded by the accelerated deuterium nucleus.

He didn't know that Chen Muwu had to complete both deuterium-deuterium fusion and deuterium-deuterium fusion, so he killed two birds with one stone.

And fortunately, Eddington did not stubbornly persist again and again, otherwise even if Chen Muwu produced almost 100% pure deuterated ammonium chloride NDCl, and then bombarded it with the accelerated deuterium nucleus, it would be impossible to find the equation for the nuclear fusion reaction inside the sun that Eddington wanted to know.

Although bombarding a deuterium nucleus with a deuterium nucleus produces a radioactive tritium-3 nucleus T, which in turn undergoes a beta decay to release a beta particle into helium-3,

Ｔ→He+e。

However, the half-life of tritium is 12 and a half years, and the large amount of tritium produced in the deuterium-deuterium nuclear fusion reaction is not realistic.

Now that everything has been designed, Eddington began to urge Chen Muwu to hurry up to the chemistry laboratory table and make those ammonium chloride targets containing deuterium atoms.

He also thinks that particle accelerators are high-precision experimental instruments, and it is just a matter of not letting himself touch them, and Chen Muwu has no reason to refuse his help for such simple chemical experiments as he is going to carry out next.

Chen Muwu really couldn't stand Eddington's enthusiasm, and finally agreed to his invitation.

He assigned Eddington the simplest task of all, which was to produce nitrogen.

The method of obtaining nitrogen in large quantities in industry is to separate various gases in liquid air under the condition that the boiling points of various gases are different.

In the laboratory, nitrogen is generally obtained by heating a mixture of saturated ammonium chloride solution and sodium nitrite.

NHCl + NaNO = heating = NaCl + 2HO + N↑.

There was basically no danger in this chemical reaction from reactant to product, and the reaction conditions required were nothing more than heating, which should have been easy for Eddington.

The only danger is that the nitrogen generated from the reaction is dried before being collected to remove the water vapor generated by heating and obtain a purer nitrogen gas.

After helping to install the flask, separating funnel, alcohol lamp, tripod and asbestos net, Chen Muwu repeatedly told Eddington not to touch the dry flask containing concentrated sulfuric acid.

Under the guidance of Chen Muwu's fifty steps, Eddington completed the experiment with great interest and collected enough pure nitrogen.

Then Eddington, who was full of participation, could finally stand quietly to the side and quietly watch how Chen Muwu used the nitrogen and deuterium gas he made to synthesize nitrogen trideuteride, and how to make deuterated ammonia, and reacted with hydrochloric acid, and finally purified and crystallized ammonium chloride crystals containing deuterium atoms from the obtained solution.

Eddington was satisfied, and Chen Muwu was sweating profusely.

His knowledge of chemical theory is not abundant, but his practical experience is "the first time a big girl gets on the sedan chair".

Fortunately, the experiment was completed without danger, and finally ammonium chloride containing deuterium chloride, which can convert deuterium atoms into solids, was finally obtained.

So far, the laboratory they are going to do has only achieved one stage of success, and the next thing that will be done is the main thing.

Even if Eddington next to him didn't urge, Chen Muwu couldn't open champagne here for half a time.

He worked hard to polish the ammonium chloride crystals that he had worked so hard to make into a target that could be placed in the particle accelerator, and then he and Eddington carefully escorted the precious crystal target from the Cavendish laboratory back to the laboratory where the particle accelerator was installed.

"If I knew it was so much fun to do experiments, I shouldn't have left Cavendish Labs."

As he walked down the road, Eddington switched back to excitement.

"But compared with our time, the laboratory is not what it used to be, the experimental equipment is more abundant, and the scope of experiments is more extensive.

"I remember that under Sir Thomson, we could only study two subjects, either heat or electricity, and electricity could only study two things, one was cathode rays and the other was anode rays.

"Dr. Chen, your generation is a little happier."

Looking at the state of Eddington beside him, Chen Muwu always felt that he could see the shadow of a primary school student walking on the spring outing road from him, and his whole body exuded a state of excitement.

"Professor, you can't say that."

After arriving at Cambridge University, the old Tomson who had taken a back seat helped him a lot, and once took him to play golf and watch cricket matches together.

He, Chen Muwu, can be regarded as the only descendant of the old director in the new generation of Cavendish Laboratory, and of course he has to argue a few words for his master, the dean of Trinity College.

"If it weren't for the efforts of Sir Thomson and the Cavendish Laboratory, we wouldn't have known that the ray emitting from the cathode is actually a bundle of electrons, let alone the structure of the nucleus.

"No matter how many floors there are in the physics building, it has to be built from below or layer by layer, and you can't skip a certain floor and build a higher floor. Our contributions to physics are also based on those of our predecessors.

"If Galileo hadn't invented the telescope for the first time, astronomers today would be the same as Tycho and Cape Town, still using the most modest methods of observing the stars with the naked eye.

"And without the grant that Sir Thomson helped with the Lord Kelvin Foundation, we at Cavendish Laboratories would not have been able to build this particle accelerator, let alone use it today to conduct experiments and explore what the energy source of the sun is."

I don't know if I can hear the voiceover Eddington who defended Old Tom Sun, but as he spoke, the two of them had returned to the particle accelerator laboratory that had just collapsed today.

The sun was setting in the west and it was getting late, and even if Chen wanted to follow the rule set by Rutherford, the director of Cavendish Laboratory, that he had to leave work at 6 p.m. every day, regardless of whether the experiment was completed or not, Eddington would definitely be the first to disagree.

So he didn't say that the experiment would wait until tomorrow to do this kind of disappointment, but prepared to fight at night and take all the photos of the cloud room.

There is deuterium gas in the particle source, and now there is a solid target, what to do next has become familiar to Chen Muwu, and he no longer needs to face the familiar and unfamiliar particle accelerator in a daze like before.

He put the ammonium chloride containing deuterium atoms that he had obtained with great difficulty into the position of the target, sealed the entire experimental device, and applied a thick layer of milky white petroleum jelly to the interface, and then started the vacuum machine, so that the inside slowly became more and more vacuum.

After the vacuum level reaches the standard, the power supply of the starter motor is started, and the charge conveyor belt continuously delivers the charge provided from the DC power supply to the spherical electrode of the starter.

Using an electrometer to detect that the voltage of the starting motor is about to rise to a certain height, he opened the power supply and valve of the particle source again, extracted the deuterium nucleus from the plasma formed by the deuterium nucleus, electrons and deuterium molecules, launched it into an acceleration orbit, and after the acceleration of the high potential difference, it collided with the ammonium chloride crystal on the target site, and then quietly waited for the products of the impact to enter the cloud chamber improved by Blackett, and took one photographic negative after another.

Chen Muwu's job is to wait for the negative in the camera to be replaced, and then occasionally re-pressurize the starter electrode after a few accelerations.

The job that Eddington had to do was to observe what Chen Muwu was doing inside through the glass in the preparation room.

I don't know how long it took, but the sky outside the brightly lit laboratory had already darkened, and Chen Muwu finally finished taking a few photographs they had prepared in advance.

He turned off the particle source, turned off the machine, and short-circuited the motor, releasing the charge accumulated on the spherical electrode in an instant.

Then he turned on the machine and took out the ammonium chloride target inside,—— if the experiment was unsuccessful, the target would continue to be used,—— carefully put away, and then walked out of the laboratory with the stack of photographic negatives and returned to Eddington's side.

"How's it going, did the experiment succeed?"

Chen Muwu was used to the fact that the other party was more interested in this experiment than he was, so he just shook his head: "I don't know if the experiment was successful or not, anyway, so many photonegatives were taken." If tomorrow we can discover a new substance other than the deuterium nucleus in any of these negatives, then our experiment may have been successful.

"If successful, we may have to go further and find more experimental data; If it doesn't work, we have to go back to the lab and redo today's experiments until they succeed or never succeed, and then redesign new experiments. ”

"Why don't we look better tomorrow now?"

Chen Mujun yawned in a mock manner, and Eddington closed his mouth stupidly.

Except for the nitrogen gas made with sodium nitrite and ammonium chloride in the chemistry laboratory, most of the remaining experiments today were carried out by Dr. Chen alone, and I was really excited to see it, but if I think about it from another perspective, I can feel how tired Dr. Chen is without stopping.

Eddington felt that as an elder, he seemed to have forgotten Dr. Chen's identity as a world-renowned rookie in physics, and instead regarded him as a junior young man, squeezing him a little too much, which made him feel a little guilty in his heart.

But this guilt lasted less than one night.

After thinking about the sun on the back side of the earth all night, Eddington, who hadn't slept well, couldn't wait to knock on the door of the room belonging to Chen Muwu in Trinity College when the sun was just rising the next morning.

"Good morning, Professor Eddington."

Chen Muwu, who was sleepy-eyed, poked his head out of the crack in the door.

"Dr. Chen, good morning."

After the door opened, Eddington was not polite, and directly pushed the door in, still holding a few photographs taken yesterday.

This made Chen Muwu feel that this person really had perseverance, could it be that he stayed up all night last night and watched the negatives, can he still be so energetic today?

"Did you find the helium-4 nucleus produced by nuclear fusion on the photographic disc last night?"

Even though his head was still not very clear, Chen Muwu still deliberately asked the wrong question.

Eddington's answer, however, was even more subtle: "No, no, no, Dr. Chen, this is what I brought to you."

"I couldn't sleep last night, and I did try to look at the photographs, and then I realized that I didn't seem to be able to do it.

"But I still found some things from these negatives, such as some of the traces are thick, and some of the traces are thin. Some trajectories have high curvature, while others have low curvatures. Because I really can't get it, I brought it over early in the morning for you to see.

"I have told the servants of the academy to bring breakfast and tea to this room, Chinese green tea, not Indian black tea, which you don't like, but before that, I want you to look at the pictures. After breakfast, we went to the lab to see the rest of the negatives. ”

Eddington's abacus beads crackled and were about to splash on Chen Muwu's face.

"Professor, I'm going to wash up and wash all the dirt off my face, and then I'll look at these few photo negatives you picked out."

Eddington, who didn't hear the teasing meaning in his words, nodded in agreement.

After sticking his head under the water pump and making a forced start for his brain, Chen Muwu finally sobered up a little.

He took a few of his carefully selected photographs from Eddington, who had already entered the room and sat down on the sofa, and sat down at his table to look at them carefully.

The trajectory of the particle in the cloud chamber, the thickness, length and straight curve are all said, and the amount of charge, the mass and the velocity of the particle at the time of incident are all related.

I have to say that Eddington still has two brushes, and his luck is really good.

Chen Muwu didn't use a ruler to measure and calculate with a pen and paper, but just took a cursory look at the radius of those trajectories in the magnetic field, and felt that Eddington had found the tritium nucleus with one positive charge and the helium-3 nucleus with two positive charges.

(End of chapter)