Science: 7,000,000 Volts

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Staff men pumping ratchet levers jacked the trucks slowly apart until the air gap between the fulminating balls approached 40 ft. Blue, green, violet and lavender lightning lapped hungrily around the bases of the columns, licked the steel roof-beams overhead, searched the walls of the hangar, crashed from ball to ball. At last the designer cried:

"Stand by! Power off! Lights! Lights!"

Amid warm congratulations. Dr. Van de Graaff announced calmly that the voltage reached was about 7,000,000—a record for man-made lightning.* But to him the test, though spectacular and successful, was simply another step toward a final objective. If unfavorable weather had not forced him to hold his show indoors, he would have had the trucks moved outside where, with none of the stored electricity sparking into hangar walls and beams, he could have counted on 10,000,000 volts.

Dr. Van de Graaff knew, moreover, that a vitally important part of his huge contraption, as a scientific instrument, was a 40-ft.-long vacuum tube made of laminated paper. Still unfinished and untested last week, this tube is to bridge the gap between the balls, serve as a channel for the 10,000,000 volts which Dr. Van de Graaff expects to produce. At one end of the tube swarms of protons will be released. The high voltage will whip these particles down the tube against a target at the other end. Dr. Van de Graaff hopes that these bullets will disrupt the nuclei of the target's stable atoms in such comparatively copious numbers† that he will 1) learn more about the ultimate constitution of matter; 2) produce superpowerful x-rays: 3) glimpse a clue toward utilization of atomic energy.