Quote:
Originally Posted by mkirkpatrick  I remember reading about this very thing many years ago now,I am puzzled though Rascal.why have you included it here,is it of particular interest to you,and if it is,then
why have you not commented on it here?
regards michael. |
Dear Michael:
Dr. Richard Feynman (post incidentally) coined the term ('Tickling the Dragon's Tail').
There seems to be a period in Modern history when the hazards of radiation were underestimated and only partially understood.
The cavalier methods of experimentation mark the cross-roads of transitional understanding.
The medical application of X rays featured a similar underestimation, vis a vis, the old school medical doctors were exposed to and debilitated by X rays, due to non protective facilities and procedure.
The Curies were likewise afflicted.
The pioneers of nuclear physics paid the price and marked the perils, enabling posterity to minimize the hazards and harvest the benefits, which are still not without their elements of danger.
Feynman's dramatic, if colorful, term is no less applicable as a cautionary, regarding the hazards of knowingly or otherwise 'pushing the envelope' of research and discovery.
Are we not issuing what can be the casualties of scientic endeavor, here?
Is it not appropriate to review what were unforeseen risks in previous endeavors?
Is not the shadow of the subjected 'dragon' still ominously cast upon the tentative future of humanity?
Germane excerpt from Wikipedia:
"In May 1946, Slotin, among others, was in a laboratory doing an experiment that involved creation of the beginning of the fission reaction by placing two half-spheres of beryllium (a neutron reflector) around a plutonium core. The experiment was nicknamed “tickling the dragon’s tail” after a remark by Richard Feynman that it was “tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon” due to its flirtations with nuclear chain reaction. Slotin grasped the upper beryllium hemisphere with his left hand through a thumb hole at the top while he maintained the separation of the half-spheres by a blade of a screwdriver with his right hand, having removed the shims normally used. Using a screwdriver was not a normal part of the experimental protocol. Nine months previously on August 21, 1945, the same 6.2 kg plutonium core (later nicknamed the “demon core” because of these accidents) had produced a burst of ionizing radiation that caused lethal radiation poisoning to Harry Daghlian, an experimentor who had made a mistake while working alone doing neutron reflection experiments on it."
Best regards to you Michael, and thanks for the question,
- RP
Re: Tickling the Dragon's Tail -
01-26-2008, 07:11 AM
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