Chapter 556 Panama Canal (3)

It was not until dawn that the fire caused by the explosion gradually died down. The governor quickly asked people to check the gates and found that the four gates, each weighing 745 tons, were severely damaged by the shock wave of the explosion and could not be used any longer.

The governor had no choice but to send people to notify the fleets lined up at both ends of the canal, telling them that the Panama Canal was temporarily closed and asked them to take a detour. The fleets wailed immediately. This detour would require them to travel more than 10,000 kilometers, and most ships did not carry so much fuel.

The governor could not control what they did, so he quickly returned to the Governor's Mansion and sent a telegram to Washington. These fleets also saw the terrible explosion in the early morning, and knew that it was not intentional to embarrass them, so they naturally would not make trouble. Some simply returned to the original place, and some headed for the nearest port. In a short while, most of the work had dissipated.

After sending the telegram, the governor felt dizzy and weak, and even a little nauseous as soon as he relaxed his mind.

But he did not think much about it, just thinking that he was overworked and would be fine after a rest.

When he got home, he fell asleep and slept until noon when his wife called him for lunch. The pale-faced governor shook his head feebly. "No appetite." As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly struggled to get up, staggered into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet.

Nuclear radiation can cause harm to humans in two ways. One is direct radiation outside the human body, which is called external radiation. The other is that the radiation source contaminates the air, food, and clothing, etc., and enters the human body through breathing, eating, and contact with the skin, irradiating the human body, which is called internal radiation.

The radiation of the former is equivalent to an external machine gun, and people can at least take corresponding measures to protect against radiation, while the latter is equivalent to installing a machine gun inside the human body. Only when the radiation source decays to below the safe value or is excreted from the body through metabolism, otherwise the machine gun will continue to fire in the human body.

As for the effect of nuclear radiation on the human body, we have to start from the molecular level. Nuclear radiation acts on human cells, which will cause ionization or excitation of biological macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, and protein. This will cause structural changes and loss of activity of macromolecules. On the other hand, nuclear radiation can ionize or excite water in cells, causing changes in the structure of macromolecules and loss of activity.

In short, radiation can damage biological macromolecules, thereby damaging or killing cells. In fact, the human body has a certain immunity to this kind of damage, that is, a healthy human body will repair or eliminate these damaged cells. However, such immunity has a certain limit, and if these radiation damages exceed a certain limit (threshold), they will eventually cause some symptoms in the human body, and such damage will also increase with the increase of radiation absorption.

The Governor's wife was shocked when she saw this, and she quickly called a doctor, but learned that the doctors and nurses in the hospital had gone to the military camp.

"Dear, something is wrong. Many people in the military camp have vomiting and diarrhea, and the doctors and nurses in the hospital have rushed over."

The Governor, who was almost exhausted from vomiting, sat on the bathroom floor and muttered. "Is it collective food poisoning, but I didn't eat anything?"

At this time, let alone ordinary people, even scientists did not have enough knowledge of the harmfulness of radiation. After World War II in the original time and space, nuclear powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union had several nuclear explosion tests and immediately sent unprotected troops into the nuclear explosion area. As a result, many people got sick within a few years.

Even in 1950, the United States launched a terrible children's toy - "Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory".

The designer's slogan is to make children "have a stronger desire for science".

This toy box looks like a holiday gift bag full of snacks. There are four real uranium ore in the box! There is also a Geiger counter used to measure radioactive substances, which can be used to detect and collect radioactive samples in your yard. There are also alpha particles composed of lead 210 and polonium 210, beta particles made of ruthenium 106, and gamma rays made of zinc 65: and they are all simply placed in a transparent glass cover.

In the center of the gift bag lies the core component of the toy: the "Wilson Cloud Chamber" invented by British physicist Charles Wilson.

The product catalog describes this high-tech science early childhood toy as follows: "This equipment is absolutely amazing! It allows you to actually see electrons and alpha particles running along the track at a speed of 10,000 miles per second! Electrons running at this speed will form beautiful running tracks. You can see the beautiful and intricate running tracks of electron groups. Observing atoms through the cloud chamber is the most intimate moment we can get to atoms! ! ! "

The closed cloud chamber is filled with supersaturated water vapor or alcohol. When charged particles interact with the mixture in the container, the charged particles are ejected and ions are produced in the path they pass. The supersaturated gas condenses into small droplets with ions as the core, thus showing the track of the particles. People can observe the movement of alpha particles at a speed of 1s from this device.

"Users should not remove ore samples from the jar because they are easy to peel and break, and you will risk the spread of radioactive ore in the laboratory." This is the warning that comes with the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory, but the warning is not based on health hazards, but as a bad scientific practice: removing ore from the jar will increase background radiation, thereby invalidating your experimental results.

Such a high-tech early education toy was not expensive at the time, only $5.

Some people may wonder why such a high-tech and high-quality product is sold so cheaply?

In his autobiography "The Man Who Lives in Heaven" published in 1954, developer Gilbert said about this toy: "This is an educational toy we are most proud of. It is the result of many experiments and hard work by our employees. The government at that time privately supported the design of our toy because the government felt that our results could help the public better understand atomic energy. We also received help from the country's top nuclear physicists at the time, and we were fortunate to work with MIT. Moreover, our atomic laboratory toy does not have any fakes, all of them are real materials. Of course, the cost is too expensive, and we are actually selling it at a loss. We lose money on every set we sell, but it is undeniable that this atomic energy laboratory is the most thorough and perfect scientific toy ever!"

This guy proudly described this as the world's most novel and scientifically enlightening science and education toy.

Of course, if you want to play happily with this high-tech science early education toy, you need to risk being exposed to radiation.

At that time, many children played with this toy until they had nosebleeds and dizziness before they realized something was wrong, so the production was not large, and less than 5,000 Gilbert kits were sold.

It was not until the mid-to-late 1950s that scientists proposed dose limits, safety thresholds, etc., and 1rp (International Commission on Radiological Protection) established annual dose limits for staff and the public.

Now no one would have thought that someone would use radiation as a weapon.