Tuesday, 28 August 2012

World war 2 Atomic Bomb

August  2nd 1939 just before the outbreak of world war ll a letter written by Professor Einstein was sent to the American president by the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt, this letter contained information about the on goings in Nazi Germany. The Nazis were trying to purify U-235 which could be used to build an atomic bomb.
Since the letter was sent the Americans were working on they’re own atom bomb, they called it project Manhattan. Over a time period of six (1993-1945 ) years project Manhattan cost about 2 billion dollars.
A massive enrichment laboratory/plant was constructed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. H.C. Urey, along with his associates and colleagues at Columbia University, devised a system that worked on the principle of gaseous diffusion. Following this process, Ernest O. Lawrence (inventor of the Cyclotron) at the University of California in Berkeley implemented a process involving magnetic separation of the two isotopes.

Following the first two processes, a gas centrifuge was used to further separate the lighter U-235 from the heavier non-fissionable U-238 by their mass. Once all of these procedures had been completed, all that was needed to be done was to put to test the entire concept behind atomic fission.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was the key force behind the Manhattan Project. He literally ran the show and saw to it that all of the great minds working on this project made their brainstorms work. He was amongst those who oversaw the entire project from its conception to its completion.

Finally the day came when all at Los Alamos would find out whether or not The Gadget (code-named as such during its development) was either going to be the colossal dud of the century or perhaps end the war. It all came down to a fateful morning of midsummer, 1945.

As many know, atomic bombs have been used only twice in warfare. The first and foremost blast site of the atomic bomb is Hiroshima. A Uranium bomb (which weighed in at over 4 & 1/2 tons) nicknamed "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima August 6th, 1945. The Aioi Bridge, one of 81 bridges connecting the seven-branched delta of the Ota River, was the aiming point of the bomb. Ground Zero was set at 1,980 feet. At 0815 hours, the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay. It missed by only 800 feet. At 0816 hours, in the flash of an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 people were injured by a 10 kiloton atomic explosion.

Reference/Source: Outlaw Labs











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