How Do You Understand The Manhattan Project?
In the seven or eight years leading up to World War II, physicists in Germany, England and the US discovered the basic principles of nuclear fission-that a uranium nucleus will release energy when “split” by a neutron. With this knowledge in hand, the US government in 1942 embarked on a multibillion-dollar project to develop the first nuclear bomb. Here’s a quick guide to what became known as “The Manhattan Project.” The Manhattan Project had nothing to do with Manhattan. The name was derived from the New York City HQ of one of the presiding colonels, but most of the work was carried out in three other locations: Los Alamos, New Mexico (where the nation’s smartest scientists gathered to brainstorm the design of the bomb), Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington (where huge factories were built to process uranium). The project was fueled mainly by fear. Since most of the eminent physicists of the 1930s were of German extraction-and many chose to remain in Hitler’s Germany-it seemed
