photofission
Sign in to saveAlso known as photon-initiated fission
Photofission is a process in which a nucleus, after absorbing a gamma ray, undergoes nuclear fission and splits into two or more fragments.
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- nuclear reaction
Show 2 more facts
- has cause
- gamma ray
- partially coincident with
- photodisintegration
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Encyclopedic overview
2 sectionsContents
- Photodisintegration
- References
Photofission is a process in which a nucleus, after absorbing a gamma ray, undergoes nuclear fission and splits into two or more fragments.
The reaction was discovered in 1940 by a small team of engineers and scientists operating the Westinghouse Atom Smasher at the company's Research Laboratories in Forest Hills, Pennsylvania. They used a 5 MeV proton beam to bombard fluorine and generate high-energy photons, which then irradiated samples of uranium and thorium.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “photofission” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.