Amaldi and Segrè had not been wrong about aluminum. They had simply irradiated different samples of the element on different tables. The hydrogen in the wooden table had slowed down some of the neutrons and enhanced the almost-three-minute activity. As Hans Bethe once noted wittily, the efficiency of slow neutrons “might never have been discovered if Italy were not rich in marble. . . . A marble table gave different results from a wooden table.826 If it had been done [in America], it all would have been done on a wooden table and people would never have found out.”
