The Manhattan Project
By: Chris Cruz
Starting the project
Creating the atomic bomb
Three months after the US entered World War II, Bush recommended to the president that the United States Army be put in charge of constructing plants to produce enough fissionable materials. Responsibility was given to Army Corps of Engineers, which made the Manhattan Engineer District. A group led by Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor. It was made up of a pile of uranium bricks embedded in uranium metal slugs. On Dec. 2, 1942 plutonium was produced at a constant rate. The government decidedto go ahead with construction of the nuclear facilities. ACE began making a pilot plant using the electromagnetic-separation technique in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The plant made uranium in explosive quantities by 1945. The efforts to design the atomic bomb were spread among a number of universities. The project movedthe work to Los Alamos, New Mexico. J. Robert Oppenheimer was hired as director of the new laboratory.Oppenheimer began work at Los Alamos in March 1943, scientists and equipment from many universities moved to the laboratory. The work in the new lab included calculations of how fissionable material might be made to explodeand the construction and testing of the devices. Roosevelt was told that the first bombs would be ready to use against Japan in August 1945 and the probability for success was at least 99%.
Exploding the first Atomic bomb
The first atomic bomb was exploded at 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945 at a site called Trinity 120 miles south of Albuquerque, NM. It was detonated on top of a steel tower surrounded by scientific equipment, with remote monitoring taking place in bunkers. The explosion came as a bright light flash, a sudden heat wave, and later a huge roar as the shock wave passed. The bomb made an explosive power equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT; the tower was completely vaporized and the surrounding desert surface fused to glass. The following month, two other atomic bombs produced by the project, the first using uranium and the second using plutonium, were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
Citations
Fat Man. N.d. Nuclear Files.orgWeb. 16 Jan 2013. <http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-
Albert Einstein. N.d. ForbesWeb. 16 Jan 2013. <http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mfl45hggm/no-7-albert-einsetin/>.
Videos-
Hiroshima: Dropping the Bomb. 2007. Film. 16 Jan 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF4LQaWJRDg>.
Information-
"Manhattan Project." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online, 2013. Web. 16 Jan. 2013.
Badash, Lawrence. "Manhattan Project." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online, 2013.Web. 16 Jan. 2013.
"Manhattan Project." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 16 Jan. 2013.