Force 5,000,000 Times as Potent as Coal A natural substance found abundantly in many parts of the earth, now separated for the first time in pure form, has been found in pioneer experiments at the Physics Department of Columbia University (New York) to be capable of yielding such energy that one pound of it is equal in power output to 5,000,000 pounds of coal or 3,000,000 pounds of gasoline, it became known recently. The discovery was announced in the "Physical Review," official publication of American physicists and one of the leading scientific journals of its kind in the world.
Prof. John R. Dunning, Columbia physicist, who headed the scientific team whose rearch led to the experimental proof of the vast power in the newly isolated substance, told a colleague, it was learned, that improvement in the methods of extraction of the substance was the only step that remained to be solved for its introduction as a new source of power. Other leading physicists agreed with him.
A chunk of five to ten pounds of the new substance, a close relative of uranium and known as U-235, would drive an ocean liner or an ocean-going submarine for an indefinite period round the oceans of the world without refueling, it was said, for such a chunk would possess the power-output of 25,000,000 to 50,- 000,000 pounds of coal, or of 15,000,000 to 30,000,006 of gasoline.
Uranium ore, in which the U-235 also is present, is found in the Belgian Congo, Canada, Colorado, England and Germany, in relatively large amounts. It is 1,000,000 times more abundant than radium, with which it is associated in pitchblende ores.
Until about two months ago not even an infinitesimal drop of the substance had been isolated in pure form and the task of doing so appeared hopeless from a practical point of view. Toward the end of February a minute fraction of a gram was isolated at the University of Minnesota Physics Department, under the direction of Prof. Alfred O. Nier. The sample was rushed at once to Columbia University, where Prof, Dunning, in collaboration with Dr. E. T. Booth and Pr. Aristid V. Grosse (son of the late Mr. V. F. Grosse, former Consul-General for Russia in Shanghai), submitted it to tests with the Columbia 150-ton cyclotron (atom smasher), The sample, however, was so small that the results, while striking, served merely to stimulate the scientists at Columbia and Minnesofa to further efforts. So fast has the work progressed since the beginning of March, the report in the "Physical Review" says, that the yield has been increased 200-fold.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.