Nuclear Fission Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn & Leo Szilard

Lina Brouse and Kelly Scott

Lise Meitner D.O.B 7 November 1878- 27 October 1968

from Vienna, Austria head of the dept. of Physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm

Institute (in the basement) For decades she collaborated closely with Otto Hahn,

with whom she co-discovered protactinium in 1917 (1938) After fleeing from the Nazis she worked at the

Nobel Physical Institute in Stockholm where she realized she had split an uranium nucleus, calling it fission

Eventually opened the doors for making atomic bombs

Otto Hahn D.O.B. 28 July 1879- 28 July 1968

Born in Frankfurt am Main, German Empire

Met Meitner in 1907 and helped her escape to safety in the Netherlands(1938)

Also worked with Fritz Strassmann (bottom right)

Received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry from his discoveries of nuclear fission

Leó Szilárd D.O.B. February 11, 1898- May 30, 1964

Born in Budapest, Hungary Didn’t work with Hahn and Meitner, but

with Enrico Fermi (bottom right) was a part of the Manhattan Project in

creating atomic bombs was the co-inventor with Enrico Fermi of

the first nuclear reactor

Nuclear Fission Nuclear fission is the reaction from a

subatomic particle hitting a larger isotope, causing the nucleus of the isotope to split, resulting in the release of energy.

Along with the energy, the reaction creates more isotopes to be released, causing a chain reaction.

Nuclear fission could be man-made or found in nature as a form of radioactive decay

Nuclear Fission (cont.) Fission is also a form of transmutation Barium was found to be a product of nuclear

fission with uranium. Nuclear Fission may give off a good, dense

amount of energy, but it gives off more radioactivity

In order for nuclear fission to take place, there must be a large amount of the substance and it must have high speed neutrons.

Contributions Otto Hahn first discovered Barium-141,

while working on the effects of neutrons involving Uranium-235.

This lead Lise Meitner to work with the neutron bombardment which resulted in her discovery that fission generated a great amount of energy in emitted.

She also discovered the chain reaction from the fission.

Contributions (cont.) Leó Szilárd also became aware of this

chain reaction using uranium and thought of how this energy and reaction could be put to use like a nuclear reactor or atomic bombs.

He also worked with Albert Einstein to help President Franklin Roosevelt with an atomic bomb in WWII