In chapter 17, Kean starts by talking about every kid's favorite thing: bubbles. Donald Glaser started thinking about particle physics of all things while drinking beer and staring at the bubbles of the beer. Glaser wanted to know more about how bubbles worked and so he started building his bubble chamber. The liquid he started with to observe bubbles was beer. When that obviously didn't work out, he moved to liquid hydrogen. Donald Glaser's bubble chamber earned him a Noble Prize at the age of thirty three.
Another scientist that Kean talks about is Ernest Rutherford. He was interested in radioactivity and how radioactive substances contaminate the air around them with more radioactivity. He knew about Marie Curie's experiment to find new radioactive elements by boiling down a bunch of pitchblende, but he decided there was an easier way to get the results he wanted. He just let nature take its course and he studied the gases released by radioactive elements. By doing so he found a new element and beta particles. While receiving his Nobel Prize in 1908, Rutherford mentioned that he found that alpha particles were escaped helium particles with an early "neon" light.
This chapter was interesting at the beginning with the bubbles and all, but overall the chapter was kind of meh. The chapter at times was very confusing like I should have some special degree to understand what I was reading. I enjoyed reading about the bubble chamber and Glaser's work, but I didn't really get what the whole point of it was. Rutherford's experiment was okay as well, but the physics sometimes made it hard to understand.
*Update: Apparently, Rutherford's theory could be used as a dating device and such to find the age of the earth. That makes a bit more sense I guess.
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