On The Morning Of August 6, 1945, A B-29 Bomber Named Enola Essays

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 powerbrilliant, 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 of my interest in science and history. It seemed an appropriate topic because I am presently studying World War 2 in my Social Studies Class. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were always taught to me with some opinion, and I always wanted to know the bomb itself and the unbiased effects that it had. This I-search was a great opportunity for me to actually fulfill my interest. The Manhattan Project was the code name for the US effort during World War II to produce the atomic bomb. It was appropriately 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 (Badash 238). 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 (Badash 237). 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 their velocity , and whether only the lighter and scarcer isotope of uranium (U-235) fissioned or the common isotope (U-238) could be used. They learned that each fission releases a few neutrons. A chain reaction, therefore, was theoretically possible, if not too many neutrons escaped from the mass or were captured by impurities. To create this chain reaction and turn it into a usable weapon was the ultimate goal of the Manhattan Project. In 1942 General Leslie Groves was chosen to lead the project, and he immediately purchased a site at Oak Ridge, Tenn., for facilities to separate the necessary uranium-235 from the much more common uranium-238. Uranium 235 was an optimal choice for the bomb because of its unusually unstable composition. Thus, the race to separate the two began. During that time, the work to perfect the firing mechanism and structure of the bomb was also swiftly underway. General Groves initial task had been to select a scientific director for the bomb project. His first two choices, Ernest O. Lawrence, director of the electromagnetic separation project, and Arthur H. Compton, director of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, were not available. Groves had some doubts regarding the next best candidate, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Wood 2). Finally, Groves gambled on Oppenheimer, a theoretical mathematician, 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 uranium was divided into two parts, both of which were below critical mass. The bomb was designed so that one part would be slammed into the other by an explosive device to achieve critical mass instantaneously (Badash 238). When critical mass is achieved, continuous fission (a chain reaction) takes place in an extremely short period of time, and far more energy is released than in the case of a gun-powder explosion (Badash 238). On December 2, 1942, the first self-sustaining chain reaction with cadmium took place,

Galilleo essays

Galilleo essays Galileo Galilei was an astronomer and mathematician, he was, a man ahead of his time. Galileo discovered the law of uniformly accelerated motion towards the Earth, the parabolic path of projectiles, and the law that all bodies have weight. Among his other accomplishments was the improvement of the refracting telescope in 1610 and his advocacy of the Copernican theory which brought him into a conflict of ideas and truths between himself and the Inquisition. He was condemned by the church whose theories threatened everything that was taught by the priesthood as the holy truth and he was eventually broken by the Inquisition. Before being ultimately defeated by the church, however, Galileo made many contributions to the world of physics. His scientific discoveries and endeavors were only a portion of his contributions to the scientific community. His brilliance brought about a new era in scientific advancement and his defeat at the hands of the church put a stop to the scientific revolut ion which he had started. Galileo Galilei was a great scientist and pioneer in the fields of mechanics, astronomy, thermometry, and magnetism, although mechanics and astronomy were his main passions. He was arguably one of the brightest men who ever lived. Galileo discovered and enhanced many scientific discoveries of his time period and was highly regarded as a Mathematician and Natural Philosopher. Galileo was persecuted for his views on Earth's relationship with the rest of the heavens since he believed that the Earth revolved around the Sun and that the heavens were constantly changing and evolving. Since Galilei's vision of a metamorphosing universe came in direct conflict with the views of Aristotle, views held by and supported by the church, Galileo was eventually called before the Inquisition and forced to recant his views. Nonetheless, Galileo Galilei made significant contributions to the scientific community and he is remembered as a great scienti...