{"id":2686,"date":"2020-05-21T15:34:45","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T14:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/?p=2686"},"modified":"2020-05-21T15:34:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T14:34:45","slug":"response-to-the-archive-photo-of-the-month-april-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/2020\/05\/21\/response-to-the-archive-photo-of-the-month-april-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to the archive photo of the month – April 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Professor John Todd, Emeritus Professor of Mass Spectroscopy<\/p>\n

\"400,000<\/a><\/p>\n

It was great to see the\u00a0a<\/span>rchive photo [in the April 2020 alumni e-newsletter], a<\/span>s I can tell you that this machine is (not surprisingly) none of your suggestions (a<\/span>) to (c)!\u00a0 In fact the picture is of the 400,000 volt deuterium ion (\u2018deuteron\u2019)\u00a0a<\/span>ccelerator that I used in some of my early research when I first\u00a0a<\/span>rrived\u00a0a<\/span>t Kent in 1965.\u00a0 Before I got here the machine had\u00a0a<\/span>lready been purchased by Professor Graham Martin (our first Professor of Chemistry who later became the first Dean of Natural Sciences\u00a0a<\/span>nd\u00a0a<\/span>lso succeeded Professor Guy Chilver\u00a0a<\/span>s Deputy Vice-Chancellor),\u00a0a<\/span>nd was employed by his group for their radiochemistry\u00a0a<\/span>nd nuclear chemistry research.\u00a0 Initially the\u00a0a<\/span>ccelerator was\u00a0a<\/span>ccommodated in\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0Nissen hut\u00a0a<\/span>t the back of Beverley Farm (a<\/span>s shown here), but once the new Chemical Laboratory was completed in 1967 it was moved to the concrete \u2018tomb\u2019 in the car park\u00a0a<\/span>rea\u00a0a<\/span>t the back (now used by the Gulbenkian Theatre\u00a0a<\/span>s costume store!).<\/p>\n

The whole setup was pretty lethal when it was running,\u00a0a<\/span>nd involved\u00a0electrical<\/span>ly charging up the large\u00a0a<\/span>luminium<\/span>\u00a0container in the centre of the photo to the\u00a0a<\/span>forementioned 400,000 volts by means of the Van de Graaff generator on the left-hand side of the picture (which, incidentally is backwards way round,\u00a0a<\/span>s revealed by close examination of the writing on the various labels).\u00a0\u00a0A<\/span>ll the control console was in\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0separate room\u00a0a<\/span>way from the machine, because when in use there was\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0significant radioactive background generated through the impact of the deuterons with\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0radioactive tritium-coated target which was contained in\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0housing, just off the right-hand side of the picture.\u00a0 Sample chemicals were then irradiated by the beam of high-energy neutrons released when the\u00a0a<\/span>ccelerated deuterons collided with the tritium\u00a0a<\/span>toms.<\/p>\n

A<\/span>fter\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0pre-determined irradiation time, the high voltage generator was switched off\u00a0a<\/span>nd one could \u2018safely\u2019 re-enter the\u00a0chamber<\/span>\u00a0in order to retrieve the (now radioactive) samples for\u00a0a<\/span>nalysis.\u00a0 However it was important to remember that, even though the voltage was no longer being created by the generator, the\u00a0a<\/span>luminium<\/span>\u00a0chamber<\/span>\u00a0still<\/span>\u00a0carried<\/span>\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0residual<\/span>\u00a0electrical<\/span>\u00a0charge<\/span>,\u00a0a<\/span>nd so had to be \u2018earthed\u2019.\u00a0 This was done by touching the\u00a0chamber<\/span>\u00a0with\u00a0a<\/span>n earthing wire connected to\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0hook on the end of wooden broom handle(!),\u00a0a<\/span>s demonstrated in the photo by one of our very early members of the technical staff, Bill Povey.\u00a0 Bill did not seem to come to\u00a0a<\/span>ny lasting harm doing this procedure,\u00a0a<\/span>nd I was delighted to meet up with him\u00a0a<\/span>gain\u00a0a<\/span>t\u00a0a<\/span>\u00a0talk I gave in Herne Bay last\u00a0A<\/span>ugust (2019).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Professor John Todd, Emeritus Professor of Mass Spectroscopy It was great to see the\u00a0archive photo [in the April 2020 alumni e-newsletter], as I can … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34788,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[118124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2690,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions\/2690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}