Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project is the code name for the U.S. government research project (1942–45) that
produced the first nuclear weapons. Afraid that the Germans would be the first to developp an
atomic bomb and thus use it, Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi who respectively fled the Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy sent a letter to President Roosvelt urging a programm of research for
nuclear weapons.

At first, the research was only based at few universities but in 1942, the first controlled nuclear chain
was produced by phycisits, lead by Fermi and, as a result, the project obtained more of funds and
grew exponentially.

From 1942 to 1945, the project was under the direction of the General Leslie Grooves of the U.S
Army. Several hundred scientists were called to aid the United States in developing the atomic bomb
such as Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, Ernest Lawrence, and many others. Research
and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Canada, employing nearly 130,000 people and cost 2 billion of dollars on the 300 billion of dollars
spent during WW2.

Robert Oppenheimer was the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. During
two years, Robert Oppenheimer, aided by famous physicist like Niels Bohr, James Chadwick, Enrico
Fermi and Isidor Rabi, developed the atomic bomb.

The first test of July 1945, at an air force base in New Mexico, produced a massive nuclear explosion.
Robert Oppenheimer had succeeded and was thus nicknamed “The father of the atomic bomb”.

Although many scientists were opposed to the use of the atomic bomb, U.S. President Truman
believed that the bomb would persuade Japan to surrender without requiring an American invasion.
On August 6, 1945, a U.S. airplane dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, killing at least
70,000 people instantly (tens of thousands more died later of radiation poisoning). Three days later,
another U.S. aircraft dropped the bomb “Fat Man” on Nagasaki.

How does an atomic bomb work?

The bombs work by nuclear fission.

In the case of Little Boy, two separate cores of uranium were shot into each other by an explosive.
When the cores hit each other, it generated a chain reaction of splitting, triggering an enormous
explosion.

In the case of « Fat Man » a spherical core of plutonium was surrounded by explosives which, when
fired, increased the density in the plutonium core to generate a similar chain-reaction of atom
splitting and subsequent explosion.

(a uranium atom split into two atoms, they weighed slightly less together than the original uranium
atom. The missing mass had been converted to pure energy)