Atomic Bomb :: essays research papers

Atomic BombOn August 2, 1939 Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This was right field before the start of World War 2. In this letter Einstein and several other scientists told Roosevelt of the efforts Hitler was making to purify U-235 in which he hoped to make believe an atomic bomb. This is when the United States started the Manhattan Project. This was the project of making an atomic bomb.      In the project many brilliant minds were used. The most famous of these people is Robert Oppenheimer. He was the major person backside this project. He basically ran the operation and oversaw the hole project from start to completion. Other great people like H.C. Urey, Ernest Lawrence, Isidor Rabi, and Ken Bainbridge also worked on the project and devote just as much into it.      The most complicated process was the process of getting enough uranium to sustain a chain reaction. In that succession it was very hard to extrac t U-235. The ration of Uranium ore to the Uranium metal is 5001. Then out of this Uranium metal 99% of it is U-238 which is non-fissionable. Finding a process to refining the Uranium was the first step in developing the atomic bomb.     A massive enrichment laboratory/plant was built in oak tree ridge, Tennessee. H.C. Urey and other associates at Columbia University devised a system that separated the Uranium using the principle of fumbleeous diffusion. Ernest Lawrence shortly following this invention came up with a process using magnetic separation. This process was quicker then the first. After the Uranium metal was separated form the Uranium ore it is put into a gas centrifuge to separate the U-235 and U-238. The first step of building an atomic bomb was completed. They now had the U-235 to build a bomb.      Over the course of six years, 1939-1945, scientist worked on equations to make the U-235 into a bomb. It took some of the greatest m inds to make these formulas. At the end of the six years and after spending $2 billion they had what they thought was a workings bomb or a very expensive dud.      At 52945 (Mountain War Time) on July the 16th, 1945 the "Gadget", the code name for the bomb, was time-tested in the Jemez Mountains in northern tender Mexico. This was the first atomic bomb ever detonated. The Gadget caused a white blaze to stretch across the skies of New Mexico.