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To: Mr. K

Thanks for the info!!! I am humbled very often on FR and actually appreciate it. My knowledge base gets bigger every day. Fascinating that it can be healthy in small doses.
And I was wondering what was the big deal with the catfish?
I probably wouldn’t eat the apples there out of an abundance of caution though.
I cant BELIEVE it became a nuclear reactor in effect regarding that incident at Manhattan project. If he didn’t lift the top part off, how bad would it have gotten?


34 posted on 04/22/2015 7:32:03 AM PDT by dp0622
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To: dp0622

it could have gone critical and exploded


57 posted on 04/22/2015 8:04:11 AM PDT by Mr. K (Palin/Cruz - to defeat HilLIARy/Warren)
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To: dp0622

I recall reading about that event in the excellent book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”

They had a shielded sphere, and they would use two screw drivers to pry the top half away, and could measure the increase in neutron production (I recall because the further away the top part got, the fewer neutrons were being absorbed, and you could measure the activity going up on a detector.

It was fun and games (with a very, very small amount of learning, but mostly the guy was doing it for jollies) and remained fun and games until one day he pried it up, and the top shifted off the screwdrivers, and they had a critical event.

Boom. It was only for a few seconds, but the daamage was done. What an awful way to die.


107 posted on 04/22/2015 10:10:27 AM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant)
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