Excerpt: The opening of an article from The Conversation. Read the original for the full story.

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While scientists are known for their dedication to their research, crawling on the floor to avoid electrocution for the sake of a measurement seems a little excessive. But this is what British physicist John Cockcroft and Irish physicist Ernest T.S. Walton had to do in the early 1930s while studying the structure of atomic nuclei. Luckily, their efforts led to their receiving the Nobel Prize in 1951 .

In the early 1930s, scientists were just beginning to discover the extraordinary world hidden inside the atom , which is made up of a dense center, called the nucleus, with electrons orbiting around it.