Ernest Lawrence a scrap of a paper napkin. While sitting in the library one evening in 1929, Lawrence glanced over a journal article by Rolf Widerøe, and was intrigued by one of the diagrams. This depicted a device that produced high-energy particles by means of a succession of small "pushes". The device depicted was laid out in a straight line using increasingly longer electrodes. At the time, physicists were beginning to explore the atomic nucleus. In 1919, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had fired alpha particles into nitrogen and had succeeded in knocking protons out of some of the nuclei. But
Alpha process synthesized by alpha capture prior to the silicon fusing process, a precursor to Type II supernovae. Silicon and calcium are purely alpha process elements. Magnesium can be burned by proton capture reactions. As for oxygen, some authors consider it an alpha element, while others do not. Oxygen is surely an alpha element in low-metallicity population II stars. It is produced in Type II supernovas and its enhancement is well correlated with an enhancement of other alpha process elements. Sometimes carbon and nitrogen are considered alpha process elements, since they are synthesized in nuclear alpha-capture reactions. The abundance of alpha elements