| The Manhattan Project | |||||||||||||||||
| 10 Facts on the Manhattan Project | Where the bombs were dropped | ||||||||||||||||
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1>The atomic bomb was made to stop the Germans from taking over Europe. 2>The Manhattan Project was a project to develop an atomic bomb. 3>The first atomic bomb was made with Uranium 235 as its power source. 4> The Manhattan Project started on August 2nd 1939. 5>The first atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima Japan on August 6th 1945 killing 66,000n people on impact. 6>The second atomic bomb was made with plutonium as its fuel source and was the implosion type. 7>The second atomic bomb was the first to be tested and it was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16th 1945. 8>The implosion type atomic bomb was first used in conflict over the Japanese City of Nagasaki on August 9th 1945 11:02 A.M. 9>About 1/3 of Nagasaki City was leveled and 150,000 people were killed. 10>The total cost of the Manhattan Project was 2 billion dollars more than 26 billion dollars today. |
The Enola Gay dropped the first bomb and the Boxcar dropped Fat Man the second atomic bomb. The first atomic bomb Little Boy was droped over Hiroshima and Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki. | ||||||||||||||||
| My Report | |||||||||||||||||
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The Manhattan Project It was during the Second World War that the United States emerged from its isolationist position and became a world power, thanks in a large part to its monopoly on atomic weapons. The Manhattan Project was a research project whose goal was to create an atomic weapon. It could be argued that the wheel, radio communication, and the airplane all changed the way we live our lives, but their effects are insignificant to those felt by the detonation of the first atomic weapon at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16,1945. Never before had science been used to change the course of human history so drastically. Even with the most low-tech atomic weapons, a single bomb could destroy whole populations. With the creation of thermonuclear weapons in1953, the destructive power of these bombs grew even higher. It was with these new weapons that the United States was able to emerge from World War II as a Super-power. With this new power, the United States helped to forever change the course of human history. It started with the Manhattan Project. It all started on August second 1939 when some scientists wrote to President Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify uranium-235 with which might in turn be used to build an atomic bomb. Shortly thereafter the United States Government began the serious undertaking only known then as the Manhattan Project. The need for an American atomic weapon was of great urgency to President Roosevelt. If the Germans were able to create such a weapon fist, the fate of Europe would be sealed under Nazi Tyranny. Much of the early research on the Manhattan Project was actually done right in England and Germany. It was before the war that many European scientists immigrated into the United States to avoid the coming war. Many of these scientists ended up on some level, working on the Manhattan Project. The scientists who created the first atomic bomb were so sure it would work they didn�t even bother to test it. The weapon used Uranium 235 as its core fuel source and was set up in a way as to create gun-type trigger mechanism. A small piece of U235 was fired at a larger piece of U235 in order to cause the large piece of U235 to split in two. Once the initial fission [splitting] occurs, it releases neutrons that go out and seek pieces of the slit U235. This process reaches a super critical mass and continues on to create a chain reaction with the rest of the U235. This process releases enormous amounts of enegery for such a small amount of U235. Use of this bomb first occurred over the Japanese City of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, resulting in the deaths of 66,000 deaths of innocent people on impact. The Americans soon developed another atomic weapon, one the first one to be tested, which was more powerful than the 1st. This weapon used the easier to produce plutonium instead of the rare U235. The Plutonium core is much more difficult to split then the Uranium, so the trigger method did not work. In order for the Plutonium to reach a supercritical mass, 32 shock waves must implode against the core within one ten-millionth of a second. This process allows the Plutonium to implode and create a fission chain reaction. The first Plutonium bomb was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The first Plutonium bomb used in conflict was dropped over the Japanese City of Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945. It was 11:02 a.m.; August 9th, 1945 an atomic bomb exploded 500 meters above the city of Nagasaki. The fierce blast wind, heat rays reaching several thousand degrees, and deadly radiation generated by the explosion crushed, burned, and killed everything in sight and reduced the entire area to a barren field of rubble. About 1/3 of Nagasaki was destroyed and 150,00 people killed or injured and many died of radiation poisoning in the years to come. The area was devoid of vegetation for 75 years. Forty laboratories and 200,000 people were used to create the nuclear bomb. The total cost of the Manhattan project was $2 billion dollars about equivalent to $26 billion today. | |||||||||||||||||
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