How we cite our quotes: Chapter name.(Chapter Number).Paragraph
Quote #1
Even in classes with some of the brightest students in the world, "Oppie," as friends called him, never lost his know-it-all style. He interrupted physics lectures with his own theories, sometimes charging to the chalkboard, grabbing the chalk and declaring, "This can be done much better in the following manner." (Skinny Superhero.(1).23)
Oppenheimer was just too dang smart. This kind of behavior didn't earn him many friends, but it definitely came in handy later on, when having an extraordinary mind was necessary to advance the field of theoretical physics.
Quote #2
Hahn began his experiment with a piece of silver-colored metal called uranium. He placed the uranium beside a radioactive element. He knew that neutrons would speed out of the radioactive material. He knew that some of those tiny particles would hit uranium atoms. The big question was: What happens when a speeding neutron crashes into a uranium atom?
The answer was shocking. Hahn was sure he'd made a mistake.
As expected, some of the speeding neutrons hit uranium atoms. What staggered Hahn was that the force of the collision seemed to be causing the uranium atoms to split in two. According to everything scientists knew in 1938, this was impossible. (The U Business.(2).4-6)
Sometimes it seems like science is just a bunch of people goofing around in a laboratory. But as the great Adam Savage (of Mythbusters infamy) says, "The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down." So Hahn is "screwing around" in the lab, wanting to know what happens when he shoots neutrons at uranium, and he ends up making one of the most significant scientific discoveries in history.
Quote #3
"I feel as if I had caught an elephant by its tail, without meaning to," Frisch wrote to his mother. "And now I don't know what to do with it." (The U Business.(2).20)
Frisch apparently wasn't just a skilled scientist; he also had quite the way with humorous imagery. He wasn't the only one who was stunned by his discovery, though. To this day the implications of fission are often muddled and debated by some of the world's great minds.