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How should the name Daghlian be pronounced? Is the gh silent? Winston.PL 19:17, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Criticality accidents makes it clear that such incidents do not produce enough thermal energy to raise the temperature of the sphere by much more than 100 degC, so how could it have been hot enough to nearly to melt? A reliable source is needed to back up that statement. Dan100 ( Talk) 20:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
There are several errors in the page if you compare them to other pages that reference the accident (either that or the other pages are wrong). Brick dropped? What of the screwdriver? What was the purpose of the experiment (to cause a nuclear chain reaction? That's all I can figure out from this page.. which would kill everyone). In any case there isn't enough information on this page that can be shown to be correct or even match up with other pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cs302b ( talk • contribs) 09:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
In the first accident, a critical assembly was being created by hand stacking 4.4 kg tungsten carbide bricks around the plutonium core. Figure 41 shows a reenactment* of the configuration with about half of the tungsten blocks in place. The lone experimenter was moving the final brick over the assembly for a total reflector of 236 kg when he noticed from the nearby neutron counters that the addition of this brick would make the assembly supercritical. As he withdrew his hand, the brick slipped and fell onto the center of the assembly, adding sufficient reflection to make the system superprompt critical. A power excursion occurred. He quickly pushed off the final brick and proceeded to unstack the assembly. His dose was estimated as 510 rem from a yield of 1016 fissions. He died 28 days later. An Army guard assigned to the building, but not helping with the experiment, received a radiation dose of approximately 50 rem. The nickel canning on the plutonium core did not rupture.
Ok, I still see a couple of errors that are less severe now that you've explained them.. One being the description of the pieces that were being put together. Another being whether or not the experiment was condoned by Los Alamos (in one of the two articles, sorry I only have a moment right now and can't search, it says the experiment was done late at night to avoid rules. And in any case, has there been any explanation as to why several high ranking scientists didn't realize that standing in the room poking it with a screwdriver and not.. oh.. a few miles away from such an test might be a good idea? I mean, seeing how close they can get it to going critical without doing it. It doesn't take an advanced physics degr... oh.
Not that that last one was on the fault of wikipedia, I havn't seen ANY explanation to this.
- cs302b —Preceding comment was added at 04:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
The article refers to the core going 'prompt critical' and the reference cited states 'super prompt critical' however the link to prompt critical states that it is a special case of super criticality occurring over microseconds and resulting in explosive disassembly. This does not seem to have occurred.
Is the term 'prompt critical' incorrect or is the linked definition incorrect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.31.40.71 ( talk) 02:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
If he was working alone, how is it possible for anyone to describe the accident in detail? "As he was moving the final brick over the assembly, neutron counters alerted Daghlian to the fact that the addition of this brick would render the system supercritical. As he withdrew his hand, he accidentally dropped the brick onto the center of the assembly." Then, we are told that he panicked. Next, we know exactly what he did after he panicked. All of this must be the result of rational inference, but it is not a certain description of the actual events. How could it be? Lestrade ( talk) 00:59, 11 December 2009 (UTC)Lestrade
I had assumed that he would have been incapacitated or incommunicable after the accident. Lestrade ( talk) 17:45, 11 December 2009 (UTC)Lestrade
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File:Radiation Burn Hand of Daghlian.png, has been nominated for deletion at
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Reviewer: Ian Rose ( talk · contribs) 09:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Actually heard of this poor fella, should be able to review this w/e. Cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 09:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Apologies for not getting to this sooner...
Toolbox checks -- no dab or EL issues.
Prose/structure/detail -- split longish first sentence, no other issues I could see.
Images -- licensing looks fine.
Referencing
Cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 06:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Not moved; after extended discussion, consensus is clearly against the proposed move. Whether the move was correct as a matter of process in the first place, there is a clear consensus in this discussion to exclude the comma in this title. bd2412 T 23:26, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Harry K. Daghlian Jr. → Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. – longstanding, stable title should be restored. Directly related to Talk:Larry Mullen Jr.. – Calidum ¤ 22:47, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the close, BD2412. The original move ( here) had nothing unusual about it, and was several days after the close of the RFC and revision of WP:JR that said no-comma is preferred, so I'm wondering why you added "Whether the move was correct as a matter of process in the first place" to your closing statement. As far as I know, I did nothing questionable there. Let me know if you see an issue, otherwise I'll consider it water under the bridge. Thanks again. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:24, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved as proposed. SSTflyer 09:46, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Harry K. Daghlian Jr. →
Harry Daghlian – This person was only 24 when he died. It's not like was was a professor with a lot of published scientific papers (although of course he could have become one, had he not had the incident). Why not keep the article at "Harry Daghlian"? Simple enough (and no comma to quarrel about).
HandsomeFella (
talk)
05:13, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
This may not be the right place but what I'm wondering about is what specifically this early criticality experiment sought to find out.
In a "normal" quantitative science experiment, what you do is keep all parameters constant except one, which you vary in order to obtain different results. These results then make it possible to arrive at formulas or algorithms to describe the interrelations between the different parameters.
For example, a simple experiment about the electrical conductivity of liquid solutions would be to dip two electrodes into a sample solution, apply a current and measure the voltage. In a series of experiments you could then vary the distance between the electrodes, or the concentration of the solution, or the current, or the voltage etc, and even do multiple series for different electrolytes to compare those to each other, and arrive at the specific conductivity of given electrolytes.
Now it is clear that in the criticality experiment, they measured neutron flux. But the variable parameter in the Daghlian experiment seems to have been the "number of reflector blocks" which seems oddly undspecific; the results would seem to be applicable only to his sepcific experimental set-up. Cancun ( talk) 12:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Harry Daghlian article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | Harry Daghlian has been listed as one of the Warfare good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | |||||||||
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![]() | Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on August 21, 2015, August 21, 2020, and August 21, 2023. |
![]() | This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
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How should the name Daghlian be pronounced? Is the gh silent? Winston.PL 19:17, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Criticality accidents makes it clear that such incidents do not produce enough thermal energy to raise the temperature of the sphere by much more than 100 degC, so how could it have been hot enough to nearly to melt? A reliable source is needed to back up that statement. Dan100 ( Talk) 20:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
There are several errors in the page if you compare them to other pages that reference the accident (either that or the other pages are wrong). Brick dropped? What of the screwdriver? What was the purpose of the experiment (to cause a nuclear chain reaction? That's all I can figure out from this page.. which would kill everyone). In any case there isn't enough information on this page that can be shown to be correct or even match up with other pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cs302b ( talk • contribs) 09:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
In the first accident, a critical assembly was being created by hand stacking 4.4 kg tungsten carbide bricks around the plutonium core. Figure 41 shows a reenactment* of the configuration with about half of the tungsten blocks in place. The lone experimenter was moving the final brick over the assembly for a total reflector of 236 kg when he noticed from the nearby neutron counters that the addition of this brick would make the assembly supercritical. As he withdrew his hand, the brick slipped and fell onto the center of the assembly, adding sufficient reflection to make the system superprompt critical. A power excursion occurred. He quickly pushed off the final brick and proceeded to unstack the assembly. His dose was estimated as 510 rem from a yield of 1016 fissions. He died 28 days later. An Army guard assigned to the building, but not helping with the experiment, received a radiation dose of approximately 50 rem. The nickel canning on the plutonium core did not rupture.
Ok, I still see a couple of errors that are less severe now that you've explained them.. One being the description of the pieces that were being put together. Another being whether or not the experiment was condoned by Los Alamos (in one of the two articles, sorry I only have a moment right now and can't search, it says the experiment was done late at night to avoid rules. And in any case, has there been any explanation as to why several high ranking scientists didn't realize that standing in the room poking it with a screwdriver and not.. oh.. a few miles away from such an test might be a good idea? I mean, seeing how close they can get it to going critical without doing it. It doesn't take an advanced physics degr... oh.
Not that that last one was on the fault of wikipedia, I havn't seen ANY explanation to this.
- cs302b —Preceding comment was added at 04:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
The article refers to the core going 'prompt critical' and the reference cited states 'super prompt critical' however the link to prompt critical states that it is a special case of super criticality occurring over microseconds and resulting in explosive disassembly. This does not seem to have occurred.
Is the term 'prompt critical' incorrect or is the linked definition incorrect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.31.40.71 ( talk) 02:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
If he was working alone, how is it possible for anyone to describe the accident in detail? "As he was moving the final brick over the assembly, neutron counters alerted Daghlian to the fact that the addition of this brick would render the system supercritical. As he withdrew his hand, he accidentally dropped the brick onto the center of the assembly." Then, we are told that he panicked. Next, we know exactly what he did after he panicked. All of this must be the result of rational inference, but it is not a certain description of the actual events. How could it be? Lestrade ( talk) 00:59, 11 December 2009 (UTC)Lestrade
I had assumed that he would have been incapacitated or incommunicable after the accident. Lestrade ( talk) 17:45, 11 December 2009 (UTC)Lestrade
![]() |
An image used in this article,
File:Radiation Burn Hand of Daghlian.png, has been nominated for deletion at
Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests June 2011
|
A discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. If you feel the deletion can be contested then please do so (
commons:COM:SPEEDY has further information). Otherwise consider finding a replacement image before deletion occurs.
This notification is provided by a Bot -- CommonsNotificationBot ( talk) 18:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC) |
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Ian Rose ( talk · contribs) 09:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Actually heard of this poor fella, should be able to review this w/e. Cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 09:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Apologies for not getting to this sooner...
Toolbox checks -- no dab or EL issues.
Prose/structure/detail -- split longish first sentence, no other issues I could see.
Images -- licensing looks fine.
Referencing
Cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 06:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Not moved; after extended discussion, consensus is clearly against the proposed move. Whether the move was correct as a matter of process in the first place, there is a clear consensus in this discussion to exclude the comma in this title. bd2412 T 23:26, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Harry K. Daghlian Jr. → Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. – longstanding, stable title should be restored. Directly related to Talk:Larry Mullen Jr.. – Calidum ¤ 22:47, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the close, BD2412. The original move ( here) had nothing unusual about it, and was several days after the close of the RFC and revision of WP:JR that said no-comma is preferred, so I'm wondering why you added "Whether the move was correct as a matter of process in the first place" to your closing statement. As far as I know, I did nothing questionable there. Let me know if you see an issue, otherwise I'll consider it water under the bridge. Thanks again. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:24, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved as proposed. SSTflyer 09:46, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Harry K. Daghlian Jr. →
Harry Daghlian – This person was only 24 when he died. It's not like was was a professor with a lot of published scientific papers (although of course he could have become one, had he not had the incident). Why not keep the article at "Harry Daghlian"? Simple enough (and no comma to quarrel about).
HandsomeFella (
talk)
05:13, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
This may not be the right place but what I'm wondering about is what specifically this early criticality experiment sought to find out.
In a "normal" quantitative science experiment, what you do is keep all parameters constant except one, which you vary in order to obtain different results. These results then make it possible to arrive at formulas or algorithms to describe the interrelations between the different parameters.
For example, a simple experiment about the electrical conductivity of liquid solutions would be to dip two electrodes into a sample solution, apply a current and measure the voltage. In a series of experiments you could then vary the distance between the electrodes, or the concentration of the solution, or the current, or the voltage etc, and even do multiple series for different electrolytes to compare those to each other, and arrive at the specific conductivity of given electrolytes.
Now it is clear that in the criticality experiment, they measured neutron flux. But the variable parameter in the Daghlian experiment seems to have been the "number of reflector blocks" which seems oddly undspecific; the results would seem to be applicable only to his sepcific experimental set-up. Cancun ( talk) 12:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)