The Manhattan Project
On the morning of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay flew over
the industrial city of Hiroshima, Japan and dropped the first atomic bomb
ever. The city went up in flames caused by the immense power equal to
about 20,000 tons of TNT. The project was a success. They were an
unprecedented assemblage of civilian, and military scientific brain power—
brilliant, intense, and young, the people that helped develop the bomb.
Unknowingly they came to an isolated mountain setting, known as Los Alamos,
New Mexico, to design and build the bomb that would end World War 2, but
begin serious controversies concerning its sheer power and destruction. I
became interested in this topic because ...
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named for the
Manhattan Engineer District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, because much
of the early research was done in New York City. Sparked by refugee
physicists in the United States, the program was slowly organized after
nuclear fission was discovered by German scientists in 1938, and many US
scientists expressed the fear that Hitler would attempt to build a fission
bomb. Frustrated with the idea that Germany might produce an atomic bomb
first, Leo Szilard and other scientists asked Albert Einstein, a famous
scientist during that time, to use his influence and write a letter to
president FDR, pleading for support to further research the power of
nuclear fission. His letters were a success, and President Roosevelt
established the Manhattan Project.
Physicists from 1939 onward conducted much research to find answers to such
questions as how many neutrons were emitted in each fission, which elements
would not capture the neutrons but would moderate or reduce ...
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as director of
the weapons laboratory, built on an isolated mesa (flat land area) at Los
Alamos, New Mexico.
After much difficulty, an absorbent barrier suitable for separating
isotopes of uranium was developed and installed in the Oak Ridge gaseous
diffusion plant. Finally, in 1945, uranium-235 of bomb purity was shipped
to Los Alamos, where it was fashioned into a gun-type weapon. In a barrel,
one piece of uranium was fired at another, together forming a supercritical,
explosive mass. To achieve chain-reaction fission, a certain amount of
fissile material, called critical mass, is necessary. The fissile material
used in the Hiroshima model was uranium 235. In the bomb, the ...
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"The Manhattan Project." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 7 Aug. 2006. Web. 22 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Manhattan-Project/50337>
"The Manhattan Project." Essayworld.com. August 7, 2006. Accessed December 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Manhattan-Project/50337.
"The Manhattan Project." Essayworld.com. August 7, 2006. Accessed December 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Manhattan-Project/50337.
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