The Atom Bomb :: essays research papers fc

The atom bomb is one of the most important discoveries in sophisticated day science. Countless scientists lend relentlessly on the project and their efforts opened the limen for present and future exploration of the atom.Just before the beginning of World fight II, Albert encephalon wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Urged by Hungarian-born physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wingner, and Edward Teller, Einstein told Roosevelt ab prohibited Nazi German efforts to purify Uranium-235 which might be employ to build an atomic bomb. Shortly after that the United States Government began work on the Manhattan suggest. The Manhattan Project was the code name for the United States effort to forge the atomic bomb before the Germans did. "The first successful experiments in ripping a uranium atom had been carried out in the autumn of 1938 at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin" Just after Einstein wrote his letter. So the draw was on. Major General Wilhelm D. Sty er called the Manhattan Project "the most important job in the war . . . an all-out effort to build an atomic bomb." It turned out to be the biggest development in warfare and sciences biggest development this century.The most multiform issue to be addressed by the scientists working on the Manhattan Project was the production of ample amounts of enriched uranium to sustain a chain reaction. At the time, Uranium-235 was hard to extract. Of the Uranium ore mined, only about 1/500th of it ended up as Uranium metal. The Uranium metal is relatively rare, occurring in Uranium at a ratio of 1 to 139.Separating the one pct Uranium-235 proved to be a challenge. No ordinary chemical extraction could separate the two isotopes. Only mechanical methods could effectively separate U-235 from U-238. Scientists at Columbia University solved this difficult problem.A massive enrichment plant was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. H. C. Urey and his associates and colleagues at Columbia Univers ity designed a system that worked on the principle of gaseous diffusion. After this process was completed, Ernest O. Lawrence from the university of California in Berkeley utilise a process i nvolving magnetic separation of the two isotopes. Finally, a gas centrifuge was used to further separate the Uranium-235 from the Uranium-238. The Uranium-238 is forced to the place because it had more mass than the Uranium-235. This Uranium was then transported to a laboratory headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the major force behind the Manhattan Project.