Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu #AsianPacificAmericanHeritageMonth

Adafruit asian pacific american heritage month blog

Today we celebrate Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu whose expertise in experimental physics earned her the recognition as the “First Lady of Physics”. After completing her PhD at U.C. Berkeley Dr. Wu taught at Princeton and Smith College and eventually went on to work on the Manhattan Project at Columbia where she remained for the rest of her career.

6920376363 845e28ec6e b

From Scientific American:

By this point in her career, Wu had earned a solid reputation as a highly skilled experimental physicist. With the war behind her, she needed a new problem to focus on. Wu chose wisely: Her investigations of beta decay — a mysterious type of radioactivity in which a large atomic nucleus emits energy and morphs into a new element — would help her reshape the world’s understanding of several fundamental atomic processes.

At the time, no one really understood how beta decay worked. Back in 1933, Enrico Fermi had devised what seemed like a viable theory for how an atom’s nucleus, composed of protons and neutrons, could shoot off an electron along with a neutrino and change into a completely different element in the process. But a number of physicists had tried to support Fermi’s theory with experimental data, and their results were muddled at best.

If there was one thing for which Chien-Shiung Wu was known, it was going the extra mile to design experiments in a way that unequivocally elucidated the mechanisms of a system. “She had a very, very strong sense that things had to be done right,” Wu’s former graduate student, Leon Lidofsky, told author Sharon McGrayne. “If it was done sloppily, it wasn’t worth doing because the results weren’t reliable.”

Wu was really a master engineer as much as she was a physicist. And, much like Star Trek’s Lieutenant Commander Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, she was considered a “miracle worker”. In the case of beta decay, by carefully deconstructing what other physicists had done in their experiments, she noted a critical fact: The radiation sources they had worked with were of different thicknesses. This turned out to be the key problem with previous tests of Fermi’s decade-old theory. As soon as Wu controlled for the source thickness, her and others’ results beautifully matched Fermi’s predictions, proving him right once and for all.

Read more from Scientific American, the National Women’s History Museum, Berkeley Nuclear Research Center, TIME and The New York Times.


Halloween season is here!
Halloween season is here! Check out all the posts, gift guides, and more!

Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — New Products 10/4/2024 Featuring Adafruit RP2350 22-pin FPC HSTX to DVI Adapter for HDMI Displays! (Video)

Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Adafruit Grand Opening, Profile MicroPython Memory and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi — Classic editor

EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Garden Lights, Bluetooth 6.0, and more!

Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — A look at Boeing’s supply chain and manufacturing process

Electronics – Adafruit Daily — When do I use X10?

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.