107 Stories About Chemistry |
Are There on Earth? The Nobel Prize is the highest award to a scientist. There are and have been very many scientists in the world, but just over a hundred of them have been awarded the Nobel Prize and they received it for the most outstanding of outstanding discoveries. Three of the Nobel Prizemen for 1932 were Murphy, Urey and Brickwedde.
It was thought previously that there was only one hydrogen
on Earth, that with an atomic weight of one. Murphy and his colleagues
discovered a second hydrogen, twice as heavy. This was the hydrogen isotope
having the atomic weight two. Isotopes are varieties of atoms with the
same charge but different atomic weights. In other words, the nuclei of
isotopic atoms contain an equal number of protons but different numbers
of neutrons. Isotopes are known for all the chemical elements: some of
them exist in nature; others have been obtained artificially by means of
nuclear reactions.
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