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FROM THE ARCHIVEMay 16, 1937·Laredo, Texas

ATOM SMASHING & RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS

Scanned from The Laredo Times 192?-, May 16, 1937
ATOM SMASHING & RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS
Source image courtesy of the Library of Congress · Chronicling America
Page transcript

Huge shotguns smash the tiny atom. Giant devices have been built to hurl millions of electric particles 10,000 times faster and proportionately farther than a 16-inch shell in an effort to discover the basic makeup of matter and what it can do for humanity.

By Robert D. Potter. Here are fads and fashions in scientific research just as there are styles in automobiles each year. And the latest fashion in physical research is atom smashing. Staggeringly huge apparatus that rivals in appearance some of the fantastic dreams of the Hollywood motion picture directors lends popular appeal to research which is fundamentally important and which is already bringing new knowledge to the nature of matter and applications that promise to help man.

Greatest practical value of the moment in all the atomic bombardment research is the production of radioactive elements artificially. Radiosodium, for example, can give off piercing radiation like that from radium for a matter of hours. Physicians and scientists alike are keenly aware of the potential value of this production in the treatment of cancer.

The world of the atombuster is a region within the heart of an atom that is smaller in

Reconstructed from Library of Congress OCR with AI assistance. Meaning preserved; mechanical OCR artifacts removed.