The Manhattan Project :: History

The Manhattan ProjectOn the morning of tremendous 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 ca enjoymentd 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 heap that helped develop the bomb. Un hit the hayingly they came to an isolated mountain setting, known as Los Alamos, advanced Mexico, to design and build the bomb that would end gentlemans gentleman War 2, unless 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 wante d to know the bomb itself and the unbiased effects that it had. This I-search was a great opportunity for me to truly fulfill my interest. The Manhattan Project was the code name for the US effort during World War II to mother the atomic bomb. It was appropriately named for the Manhattan Engineer soil of the US Army Corps of Engineers, because much of the early research was through in New York City (Badash 238). Sparked by refugee physicists in the United States, the weapons platform was slowly organized after nuclear fission was discovered by German scientists in 1938, and many US scientists expressed the fear that Hitler would set about 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 livelihood to further research the power of nuclear fission (Badash 237). His let ters 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 and 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.