2009-10.2.2.D

=The Manhattan Project=

J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City April 22nd, 1904. he was a very highly educated man. Oppenheimer studied at the Ethical Culture Society School who now has a physics laboratory named after him, he went to Harvard in 1922 originally wanting to be a chemist but quickly switched to physics. He graduated Summa Cum Laude (kind of like a valedictorian)at Harvard in 1925. following his graduation he went and worked under J.J. Thompson at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory. He also went to the University of Gottingen and worked under Maw Born in 1926 which is where they created the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation (separates nuclear motion from electric motion in the mathematical treatment of molecules). Oppenheimer received his Ph.D at age 22. he contributed to things such as the Quantum Theory, the theory of cosmic ray showers, and he did work leading to descriptions of quantum tunneling.

He returned to Harvard in 1927 to study Mathematical physics and as a national research council fellow. He also went to the California institute of technology in 1928, where he would later become an employee for 13 years while at the same time working as an assistant professor in physics at the University of California.

After researching the fields of astrophysics, nuclear physics, spectroscopy and then writing papers suggesting theories of black holes Oppenheimer was credited as a founding father to the American school of theoretical physics.

When WWII started Oppenheimer fervently involved himself in the efforts of creating an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer first began working on the atomic bomb at Lawrence’s radiation laboratory at Berkeley.

By 1942 General Leslie Groves made him the director of the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was hosted at the Los Alamos Laboratory in the desserts of New Mexico. Oppenheimer brought together the best minds in physics of the times, by the end of the Project he managed around 3,000 people! After three years of non stop work on the atomic bomb the scientists were ready to have their first test which they named Trinity, Trinity took place on July 16th, 1945 in Alamagordo New Mexico. The test was successful.

Oppenheimer was considered the “Father of the atomic bomb.” After WWII he was appointed chairman of the general committee to the atomic energy commission (AEC) until 1952 when he opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb.

In 1953 he was accused of having “communist sympathies” and Oppenheimer’s security clearance was taken away. i think it's kind of ironic how they asked Oppenheimer to create the atomic bomb and do such a big favor for America and it was considered such an honor but as soon as he accomplished the atomic bomb they turned around and took all of his privileges. In 1963 things about Oppenheimer’s “communist sympathies” were cleared up and President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to fix the injustice by awarding Oppenheimer one of the AEC’s most prestigious awards, the Enrico Fermi Award. February 18, 1967 J. Robert

Los Alamos
Los Alamos (nicknamed “Project Y”) was the atomic weapons laboratory; it was the site of the development of the first atomic bomb. Los Alamos is located in New Mexico where it is isolated yet still accessible where there is enough water and a moderate climate.The workers (Physicists, Chemists, Metallurgists, explosive experts and military personnel) lived in the old ranch school buildings up until they realized that this project would require a lot more workers! They then expanded and built many more buildings on site.Amongst the thousands of workers 6 became noble prize winners.They would work faithfully 10 to 12 hours a day for six days a week for the next two years.Without Los Alamos the development of the atomic bombs would have been nearly impossible. Before Los Alamos Scientists spent all their time traveling from coast to coast to use certain tools, resources and machines. Communication between the many separate atomic bomb projects was poor. Telephone calls were prohibited due to the enforcement of Government security regulations (they didn’t want other countries ease dropping in on their conversations and beating them to the creation of the bomb). Teletypes were “hopeless” and writing letter was long and tedious process. Scientists need answers to questions immediately without cross country travel. Los Alamos resolved this problem, all the scientists that were deemed useful and considered necessary for the completion of the atomic bomb was brought to Los Alamos along with all the needed tools, resources and machines.



Trinity
 

Trinity was the very first atomic bomb, tested in New Mexico in Alamogordo test range in the Jornada Del Muerto (journey of death) Desert.
 


  == The "100 Ton Test" was fired on May 7th, 1945, The "100 Ton Test" was when we detonated 108 tons of TNT stacked on a wood platform 800 yards above "Trinity ground zero".The pile was threaded with 1000 curies of reactor fission product, it is still to this day the largest instrumented explosion conducted. The "100 Ton Test" allowed some indication of how fission products might be distributed by an explosion of enormous size and it allowed the calibration of instruments to measure the blast wave == <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> ==<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Trinity occurred July 16th, 1945 at 5:29A.M. (Mountain war time) it was described as a tremendous burst of light followed by a deep growling roar of explosion. several people observing the lighting effects behind a shelter were knocked to the ground by the blast. The heat of the Trinity explosion melted the sand type soil around the tower into a glassy crust known as "trinitite". == <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Origins of nuclear age
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Nuclear age began August 6th, 1945 after the explosion of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, Japan. The study of nuclear chemistry began much earlier though in 1895 when German physicists accidently discovered X-rays.

The start of the nuclear age began with the Manhattan Project. This project was committed to producing a viable atomic bomb. The bomb was a Uranium gun-type device code named "little boy". The second bomb was dropped three days later (August 9th, 1945) when the U.S. dropped a Plutonium implosion bomb code named "Fat man" on Nakasaki, Japan.

Since then no other atomic bombs have been dropped but they have been tested many times. The dropping of "little boy" and "fat man" began the Nuclear age.

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=Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)=

Geography
Geography had a big part to do with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had to pin point exactly where they were going to drop the atomic bombs. In the picture to the right you can see the route they took in dropping the bombs. They dropped the first of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Japan and three days later dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. They had to locate exactly where in Japan the bombs were going to be dropped. they then had to find a quick and easy way to get there, drop the bombs and get out! Geography had a major part of the bombings in Japan, without the correct calculations of the locations and the proper planning the mission could have been a disaster; just think if we would have accidentally dropped it at the wrong place!

Enola Gay
The Enola Gay is the B-29 Super fortress bomber that dropped the forst atomic bomb "little boy" in the attack on Hiroshima, Japan; Enola Gay dropped the bomb August 6th 1945 just before the end of WWII (main reason for Japan's surrender). Enola Gay was Named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot Paul Tibbets Jr. Enola Gay was built by the Glenn L. Martin Company. Enola Gay was in service from May 18, 1945 to July 24th 1946.

Enola Gay was accompanied by two other B-29's named Necessary Evil, which was used as a camera plane to photograph the explosion and effects of the bomb, also it carried scientific observers. The other plane was the Great Artiste which was the blast measurement instrumentation aircraft. Enola Gay is now preserved at national air and space museums.

References (2009-10.2.2.D)
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