Inelastic Scattering of Cold Neutrons from Several Hydrogenous Liquids¹

A new spinning sample method has been used to measure the energies of beryllium-filtered neutrons scattered at 90° to the beam by samples of water, ethyl alcohol, n-amyl alcohol, benzene, paraffin, and zirconium hydride. The energy distributions from all samples show that an appreciable number of scattered neutrons gain energy. The zirconium hydride and water were measured to compare the spinning sample method with other methods of measuring inelastic scattering. The hydrogenous liquids were investigated to see if the scattering data could be correlated with known molecular properties and with proposed scattering theories.