What's a cyclotron?
Wilfrid Mann at the Berkeley cyclotron in 1937.
What does a cyclotron do?
The cyclotron, invented in 1929, is a machine that breaks apart atoms. Inside a cyclotron, charged particles – pieces of atoms – are whirled in ever-widening circles. Each time the particles orbit through the cyclotron, they get a small push, much like the small push you give to a merry-go-round to make it spin faster. Eventually, the particles are moving at high speed, carrying enormous energy.
The high-energy particles are then made to smash into a target, a thin layer of atoms. The atoms in the target are literally cracked open. In this way, scientists have discovered new subatomic particles and even created new elements. In fact, the first artificial element, technetium, was created with a cyclotron in 1936.
But why smash atoms? Physicists of the 1920s and 1930s were especially interested in breaking apart atoms to find out what they were made of. The inventor of the cyclotron, Ernest O. Lawrence, was interested in the nuclear reactions that went on inside stars. He felt that high energy atomic collisions would shed some light on these reactions.
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