Little Boy Essay Research Paper Little BoyOn

Little Boy Essay, Research Paper

Little Boy

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 used in war. The city went up in flames caused by the immense power equal to about 20,000 tons of TNT. The project was a success. Hundreds of thousands died and still more were wounded. This was the final triumph that finally brought Japan to surrender. The effects of the bomb are still being seen but there is no doubt that the atomic bomb project was the greatest scientific feat of the 20th century. There was an unprecedented assemblage of civilian, military, and scientific, minds at work. Their pertinacious, intense, and theological ideas helped shape a new era. Unknowingly they also help shape what could have been the end of earth its self. This dim future was best described by Albert Einstein, the man responsible for starting the atomic bomb project in the US, “I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought with but I do know that world war 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.” As one can see begin serious controversies concerning its sheer power and destruction began as soon as the first bomb was used on Hiroshima.

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). Sparked by refugee physicists in the United States, the program was slowly organized after German scientists discovered nuclear fission in 1938. Many US scientists expressed the fear that Hitler would attempt to build a fission bomb. In theory this “fission bomb” would be more destructive than all the explosives they had in their hands (Rhode 340). Frustrated with the idea that Germany might produce an atomic bomb first, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner asked Albert Einstein, a famous scientist during that time, to use his influence and write a letter to president FDR. The letter pleaded for support to further research the power of nuclear fission and warned the president of the unfathomable destruction Hitler could cause (Badash). His letters were a success, and President Roosevelt established “The Fission Bomb Project” (Brown & Macdonald 140).

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 “which element achieved the most powerful fission.” After their research the scientists found the Uranium was the most effective for their project. The next question was which isotope of the fissured more effectively, the lighter and scarcer isotope of uranium (U-235) or the common isotope (U-238). They also 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 succeed Vannevar Bush as the head of “the Fission Bomb Project” During this changeover the project was renamed in army fashion to a code name, “the Manhattan Project”. Groves immediately purchased a site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 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 and Arthur H. Compton, were not available. Groves had some doubts regarding the next best candidate, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Brown & Macdonald 42). Finally, Groves gambled on Oppenheimer, a theoretical mathematician, as director of the weapons laboratory. For Oppenheimer’s fist task he built a factory to produce the gun-firing mechanism for the bomb. The location of the factory was on an isolated mesa 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. Since there was no known substance to separate the isotopes at the time, scientists invented a new material that is still in use today, Teflon. Finally, in 1945, the pure uranium-235 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. (Badash) To achieve chain-reaction fission, a certain amount of fissionable material, called critical mass, is necessary. The fissionable material used in the Hiroshima model was uranium-235. For Nagasaki and Alamogordo, plutonium-239. 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). When critical mass is ach