Question: how where neutrons found and made in to a neutron bome

Philip Ratcliffe answered on 13 Nov 2014:

Now, this is really technical.
But I’ll try to make at simple as possible: an Emglish physicist called Chadwick won the Nobel prize for the discovery, but the neutron bomb (note the spelling), as we shall see, is not worthy of any human recognition.
I can talk about the discovery because I teach it to my students!
There was always a problem with the nucleus because it always seemed that there must be something more in there besides the protons and that this extra must be neutral (that is, with no electric charge). Then when people started letting alpha particles (helium nuclei) hit certain other nuclei (beryllium) they discovered that indeed something neutral did come out, which in principle could have just been photons. So Chadwick let these particles collide with other nuclei. The result was that protons were knocked out of these nuclei and, from his calculations, he was able to show that this was only possible for a (neutral) particle that was slightly heavier than a proton – the neutron.
A neutron bomb is an incredibly devious device in that it’s purpose is to kill human beings but not destroy buildings. The point is simply that neutrons, being neutral, tend not to destroy things because they don’t interact, but as radiation that then deposits in living tissue, they can be quite deadly for living organisms.