What was the project for the atomic bomb?

Answer 1

the project for the atomic bomb was called...............................the Manhattan project

Above are not my words, I believe I can add some Clarity, or possibly confusion. I just graduated from college less than a year ago. Now I'm a Grad Student, and a really green one. I would also like to state that my grammar is horrible, also I will try to refrain from using words and concepts that only a physicist would understand.

The Military portion of this experimentation of these extremely complex reactions, was called "The Manhattan Project", however, there is much more to Nuclear physics than atomic bombs. The original name for this project, which started in 1939 was "Development of Substitute Materials". During World War 2 the British also had there own Nuclear program which was codenamed "Tube Alloys" Their project was absorbed into our own. The fact is we (The U.S.) are credited by far the most for the atomic bomb coming together and working, it was truly an effort by several nations, but only the U.S. refered to it as "The Manhattan Project" which as I hinted on earlier wasn't the original codename. The United States got pretty much all the credit, it's worth noting the fact that our interest in these materials, such as Uranium-238 or plutonium, in fact when the first atomic bomb was dropped, unless you were working in the nuclear program, you had never heard of plutonium, interesting fact, the british "Tube Alloys" program was called that because of plutonium. Something else that is not very well known is that the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, worked in 2 very different ways. Little Boy used a type of Nuclear reaction referred to as "Gun Type", Fat Man was an implosion-type Nuclear weapon. The implosion type was more practical. The first Atomic Bomb to ever be detonated was the implosion-type which occured during what was called "The Trinity Test". One of the main catalysts that pushed Atomic Bombs into political view was the "Einstein-Szilard" Letter, which was actually kind of a warning that it was theoretically possible to cause a chain reaction which would produce unheard of amounts of energy, but it also was a reccommendation for the U.S. to obtain as much Uranium ore as possible, this letter was sent around the Summer of 1939. Really this is more history of the development rather than the science of it. I really hope that this helps. For those of you who are intrigued by physics, lookup "Quantum Immortality" It's a thought experiment that is not hard to understand, but, it's implications are fascinating. I added all of this completely from my knowledge of the History of physics, if you find something I didn't quite get right, please feel free to add to this or edit this, just make sure that it is indeed incorrect before changing anything.