Founded in 2005, the NTU Heritage Hall of Physics is located in the Nuclear Physics Laboratory in Building No. 2. It is home to an important exhibit, the Cockcroft-Walton Linear Accelerator—the first accelerator in the NTU Nuclear Physics Laboratory—and its related scientific artifacts. The Cockcroft-Walton Linear Accelerator was built during the Japanese colonial period with a team led by Professor Arakatsu Bunsaku, an authority on physics. In 1934, Arakatsu’s team completed the acceleration experiment, the first atomic collision experiment ever conducted in Asia. The accelerator was later brought to Japan and then destroyed by the U.S. Army in World War II. After World War II ended, NTU founded the Department of Physics. At the insistence of the first chairperson, Tai Yuin-kwei, the remaining member of Arakatsu’s team, Professor Ota Yoritsune, led Hsu Yuin-chi, Lin Song-yung, Chou Muh-chuen, and Hsu Yi-chuan on a task to rebuild the accelerator. Facing a shortage of equipment and instruments after the war, the team members—having to rely on their own experience and skills—managed to conduct research on distilling heavy water and self-made scientific instruments. In 1948, the team completed the reassembly of the accelerator and performed artificial lithium atom collision experiments.

In 2004, the NTU Department of Physics decided to reconstruct the accelerator again. A team led by Professor Hsu Yuin-chi collaborated with a group of young scholars and succeeded in putting the accelerator back together. In 2005, the NTU Heritage Hall of Physics opened its doors to the public. The team made the history of the accelerator and the restoration process into a documentary called “Atomic Nucleus: Breakthrough” and held the premier in 2006 on the NTU campus.

The accelerator is far from the only highlight. The hall also houses different scientific instruments and equipment accompanied with old photos, such as an antique scale dating back to the Taihoku Imperial University period, a radioactive mineral native to Taiwan called Hokutolite, an arithmometer, a barometer, a Wilson Cloud chamber used to observe the trajectory of charged particles, and different glass instruments made by glassblowers from the department. With the addition of the physical display of educational instruments and artifacts, the NTU Heritage Hall of Physics would like to invite more people to discover the amazing world of science.