History of the Atomic Bomb

History of the Atomic Bomb

The atomic bomb1 is the most destructive weapon known to mankind. A bomb of this nature is capable of obliterating anything up to four square miles and anything reaching outside that area receives very extreme damage. Albert Einstein was the man who had convinced the United States to research the Atomic Bomb.

The Manhattan Project2 was the name given to the research and

development of the atomic bomb. It was called the Manhattan Project after

Manhattan Engineer District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, because

most of the early research was done in New York. The person that was chosen to lead this project was General Leslie Grove and Robert Oppenheimer was appointed to lead the day-to-day running of the project. In order for an atom bomb to be produced the scientists had to separate the Uranium-235 from the much more common Uranium-238. The facility that was used to separate the Uranium-135 from the Uranium-238 was not held __________________________

1 Atomic Bomb - Bomb using Uranium-235 for mass destruction.

2 Manhattan Project - Name given to the development and research of the atomic bomb in the U.S.

in New York but in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The cost of this project was two billion dollars, which is equivalent to 26 billion dollars in today's world and the factories employed 200,000 people, that was more then the amount of people employed in the United States auto mobile industry.

When the first bomb was made a site in Alamogordo, New Mexico was chosen as the testing ground. In order for the bomb to explode, all the nuclei of the several grams of Uranium would have to be split. A sphere of Uranium the size of a baseball would cause an explosion that equaled the strength of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. When the bomb had exploded there was a tower and the explosion had turned the asphalt around the tower into green sand, the sky was extremely bright and seconds after the explosion came a huge blast that sent unbelievable heat across the desert. Also, there was a huge mushroom cloud that reached the sub-stratosphere that was at an elevation of 41,000 feet. 10,000 feet away a soldier was of right off his feet by the force of the shock wave and another soldier stationed five miles away was temporarily blinded. The explosion was able to be herd 50 miles away.

The first time the United States used the atomic bomb was during World War II. They had dropped a bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan and then on the city of Nagasaki in Japan. The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and it was named "1 Little Boy". Even though it was the smaller of the two bombs dropped, "Little Boy" caused the most damage. It destroyed about 80 percent of Hiroshima's buildings and killed about 80,000 people. The heat that was generated burned everything in it's path including people and melted glass and tile. Plus powerful wind destroyed most of the houses and buildings within a 1.5-mile radius. When the wind reached the mountains, it was then reflected and hit the city center for a second time. The second bomb, which was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, was named "2 Fat Man". Even though this atomic bomb was bigger it caused less damage then "Little boy". Fat Man had only killed 70,000 civilians. As a result of the bombing there was radiation that caused long-term problems to the people of the two cities. Some people gave birth to malformed babies and other became unable to even bare children. Due to the bombing an estimated 200,000 people perished by the end of the year.

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