Actually, rather than being annexed into the Reich itself, Denmark was made into a protectorate (so the government and king were left in place -- but instrumented to serve the Reich's purposes). Similar to the status of the Netherlands and Norway.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."
So you would have been fine if this article was posted here on the day it was written instead? That's a bit arbitrary because the story itself is much older than five years and wouldn't have been "news" than either.
I'm going to guess that it looks over-engineered to you because you haven't been a chemist. This is the chemist equivalent of solving a problem with a 10 line Ruby script: perhaps more complicated than the very simplest conceivable solution, definitely a terrible path to solution if you were suggesting it to a lay third party, but not very complicated at all for someone who has spent a lot of time in the lab. It looks a lot more complicated to someone working outside the domain than someone working inside of it.
This takes the tech community's propensity for Monday-morning quarterbacking to a breathtaking new level. Yes, I'm sure you came up with a much better solution in your sixty seconds of thinking in your comfortable chair than the people on the spot, faced with literal Nazis, did at the time.
Just hide them! I wonder why Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and future Nobel laureate George de Hevesy didn't think of that.
"Just hide them! I wonder why Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and future Nobel laureate George de Hevesy didn't think of that."
Because they are geniuses and probably over-think everything.
It would take 20 minutes to find a spot to hide them, and they wouldn't be recovered for 1000 years if people weren't the wiser. But it would be pointless because you can remove the markings with any hard objects, basically instantly.
The Nazis were not 'hunting' for this stuff, even if they were, it wouldn't be worth any effort.
Step 1) take a hammer to them and remove the markings. Gold is soft and malleable. Evidence = gone. 5 minutes.
If you're worried about having arbitrary bits of unmarked gold:
+ Throw it in the garbage next door
+ Throw it in a bag in the harbour
+ Bury them in the lane or garden around the corner
+ Throw it in the sewer
It's just a couple of small bits of unmarked gold at that point. Wherever it's found - or not - it's meaningless.
"Because they are geniuses and probably over-think everything."
There are some anecdotes to the contrary.
Enrico Fermi famously estimated the strength of the first atomic bomb by "dropping from about six feet small pieces of paper before, during and after the passage of the blast wave."
Richard Feynman tested the integrity of an o-ring which he concluded must have caused the Challenger disaster by dropping the o-ring in to a glass of cold water and noticing its deformation.
These are but the first two examples that spring to mind of simple solutions found by "geniuses". I'd also categorize the way the gold medals were hidden as another simple (and brilliant) solution. It would be interesting to read a compilation of such anecdotes, if one exists.
>"I suggested that we should bury the medal(s)," but Bohr thought no, the Germans would dig up the grounds, the garden, search everywhere in the building. Too dangerous.
Though I guess they could have found somewhere else...
I took that to mean that there was not much time as Nazis were patrolling the streets, going out with two large gold medals would be extremely dangerous as they might have been stopped and searched.
That's kind of what was done. It was a clever simple hack. I'm not sure how hard it is to prepare aqua regia (maybe they had a sufficient quantity already), but all they had to do was drop the metals in, wait, and place on a shelf with other innocuous flasks and solutions.
The article so specifically stated that he was concerned the Germans would dig up the place. Also consider that there might be others interested in a large gold disk
"The article so specifically stated that he was concerned the Germans would dig up the place"
The Nazis would surely dig up his offices, but not Copenhagen.
Moreover, the Nazis didn't even know that those things were there - and they don't really have much value at all to the Nazis. They're a couple of pieces of gold.
The Nazis could do whatever they pleased with whomever they wanted - it's ridiculous to think that a couple of tiny pieces of gold would have changed their view on what to do with an acclaimed scientist. It's laughable.
They'll capture a Scientist and put him to work on whatever they want, or not.
A couple of pieces of gold are totally irrelevant.
If this were a bottle of 'heavy water' or some nuclear material, or piece of gear that they knew existed, knew was in his possession and had some strategic value, then they might spend some time looking for it. Otherwise this is not a story.
"it's ridiculous to think that a couple of tiny pieces of gold would have changed their view on what to do with an acclaimed scientist. It's laughable."
Many people were killed on a whim by the Nazis, without much if any reason at all. Being a famous scientist wouldn't necessarily save you (and especially not your valuables, which were frequently confiscated).
Then there's a good chance that the grunts who searched these people wouldn't know who they were, wouldn't care, or even feel contempt or hatred for them because of who they were or what they said or did, and would in fact value gold far more than their lives.
If you're Bohr, you have to assume that the Nazi army will impose a shoot-on-sight curfew when they reach your part of Copenhagen in a few hours or less.
The nice thing about this hidden in plain sight solution is that the location of the medals could be communicated among a small community of colleagues if necessary without the need for a messy paper trail. A set of coordinates or a treasure map is a lot less reliable in that it can be lost or intercepted.
I find it a little bit hard to believe that finding a couple of medals would be a priority as you're invading Denmark and Norway.
Sure, the Danes basically lay down and let the Germans march in, but really? The Germans needed to get to Norway asap, and were probably more concerned about that. Secure airfields, harbors, that kind of thing.
More likely the Danish cooperation policy helped later on, after the Germans had established themselves. Basically, the Danish government decided to save everyone a lot of trouble by cooperating with the invaders, a policy that is much discussed in Danish politics. It came to an end in 1943 after the Germans had done a number of hard to tolerate things.
They weren't looking for the medals specifically, they were looking for evidence of wrongdoing. If you're going to search for evidence, you're going to do it at least semi-thoroughly , cause you don't expect that sort of thing to just be sitting on a workbench (though you probably wouldn't go as far as digging holes in the backyard, unless you have specific reasons to think evidence was literally buried).
So the thing to do then is to track down the source quoted in the article When the Nazis ransacked Bohr's institute and figure out if it is exaggerated.
Your mere disbelief is rather weak in the face of statements like that one.
Flipping through the book, it doesn't give much detail as to when exactly the German stormtroopers came knocking.
The notes and errata at the end of the book don't seem to specify it either.
The point is the article makes it look like "oh crap the nazis have invaded, let's dissolve these medals" rather than "they been here for a few weeks and look like they're about to settle some bits of nazi business".
If you want a digging to go unnoticed, you don't try to conceal the digging; you dig in a place where lots of other mundane diggings are already happening.
So, not going out in the middle of the night in ninja swit; but chearful gardening in the Church's front yard instead.
You can even put a heavy, thorny bush on top, so people will be too lazy to undig it by accident.
I had missed the point about Nazis already going parading on the street. In that case, indoors methods of dealing with the medals provide a big advantage.
Actually, the piece barely mentions Poliakoff, and not even by name:
> As you can see in this video from the University of Nottingham, dissolving gold is a slow business. The narrator (who looks like he was cast by Mel Brooks, but is presumably, the real deal) explains that nitric acid loosens the gold atoms, after which hydrochloric acid moves in, using its chloride ions to surround and transform the gold.
I really don't see where you read that he's been knighted, other than Wikipedia. From the videos YouTube page I didn't get his name either, and there are no comments in the article.
That I was able to know his name without even knowing what was the video (I was behind a firewall which blocked youtube) should tell you that he has become pretty famous in the "internet famous" sense. The description was a giveaway and I remembered the video in question.
There's absolutely no need to be condescending... That description (which you quoted) was genuinely funny to me because I know who he is.
> I like how the author of this piece talk about Sir Martyn Poliakoff.
> But the article predates his knighthood. (and presumably youtube fame)
And there were no mentions to Sir Poliakoff around, neither in the article nor the video. Still, it was interesting reading about him, and he surely has become an internet celebrity, but that doesn't change that your comment was out of place to begin with.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-05-29