Nuclear bombs

1. Nuclear bombs Max Heine

2. Manhattan Project • The making of the first atomic bombs started before America's involvement in world war 2. • Albert Einstein and several other European scientists wrote to the president Franklin D. Roosevelt about Nazi Germany's attempts to purify uranium-235, one of the key ingredients of an atomic bomb. • Roosevelt started a series of research and construction projects only to be known as the Manhattan Project, which addressed the issues of purifying uranium-235 and constructing the atomic bomb. • The project was led by Robert Oppenheimer and cost $2 billion over its six year life.

4. Testing “Gadget” • “gadget” was the codename for the first atomic bomb built by the Manhattan project. • Tested at 5:30 in the morning on July 16 1945 in the Jemez mountain basin New Mexico, gadget lit up the dark sky in huge fireball. With an explosion that turned the ground around it into glass. • The results shocked many of the viewers to the point where many of them signed a petition to have the government never use this weapon again. (didn’t have any effect)

6. End of One War, Start of Another • Two atomic bombs were dropped to end world war 2. dropping bombs on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both to devastating effects, forced Japan to surrender. • However peaceful feelings were short lived, as the two superpowers of world war 2 both began competing for economic, ideological, and military dominance. • When the USSR created its first nuclear bomb in 1949 both countries saw the potential for a nuclear war and began stockpiling nuclear bombs in an unofficial war the would last 40 years.

7. How a Nuclear Bomb Works • A nuclear bomb works by compressing radioactive elements like uranium and plutonium into a tight space. When these elements decay they release energy in the form of neutrons, if a neutron collides with another nucleus of an atom the nucleus will break apart into more neutrons, thus starting the process over again. • If a nuclear bomb has enough nuclei packed tight enough together it creates a chain reaction and reaches a point called critical mass. Where the unstable material releases huge amounts of energy. • To reach critical mass explosives like dynamite are used to induce the splitting of the unstable elements and push the nuclei closer together.

8. Fun Facts! • Number of nuclear bombs built: 67500 (since 1951) • Total known land occupied by U.S. nuclear weapons bases and facilities: 15654 square miles. • Legal fees paid by the Department of Energy to fight lawsuits from workers and private citizens concerning nuclear weapons production and testing activities, from October 1990 through March 1995: $97,000,000 • An island in the pacific was vaporized during the testing of a hydrogen bomb • One nuclear bomb has the destructive power of 20000 tons of TNT

9. references • http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961 • http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/a/atomic_bomb.htm • http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/mp/p5s11.shtml • http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/07/the-trinity-test-detonation-of-the-first-%E2%80%9Cgadget%E2%80%9D/ • http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:How_Things_Work/Nuclear_Bomb • http://nuklem.tripod.com/facts_about_atomic_bomb.htm