atomic bomb
Just before the beginning of World War II, on August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein wrote to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He along with several other scientists explained to Roosevelt the goals of Nazi Germany to purify uranium-235, which, when created, could be used to build an atomic bomb. Shortly after learning this newfound information, the United States Government began the serious commitment known as "The Manhattan Project." This project was determined to hasten research that would help to create a feasible atomic bomb.
the creation of the bomb
The most complicated issue that was to be tackled was the fabrication of adequate quantities of "enriched" uranium to assist a chain reaction. At that time, uranium-235 was very difficult to extract, the ratio of conversion from uranium ore to uranium metal being 500:1. No typical chemical extraction method could separate them; only mechanical methods could work. This led to the construction of an immense enrichment laboratory/plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Harold Urey, along with his collaborators at Columbia University conceived an extraction system that worked on the principle of gaseous diffusion. Ernest Lawrence (the inventor of the Cyclotron) executed a procedure involving magnetic separation of the two isotopes in uranium-235's atoms. Next, a gas centrifuge was used to additionally divide the lighter U-235 from the heavier, non-fissionable U-238. Once all of these methods had been finalized, all that was needed to be done was to put the entire concept behind atomic fission to the test (atomic fission meaning "splitting the atom"). Over the course of six years, from 1939 to 1945, more than $2 billion was exhausted for the procedures of the Manhattan Project, and the creation of the atomic bomb.
testing the atomic bomb
Finally, on July 16, 1945, the day came when all of Los Alamos would find out if the atomic bomb, code-named "The Gadget", was going to be an enormous fault, or perhaps the end to the war. At 5:29:45 (Mountain War Time) on this morning, "The Gadget" heralded in the Atomic Age. An immense white blaze stretched from the basin of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico to the still-dark skies. This light of the explosion then turned an orange color as the atomic fireball began to shoot upwards at 360 feet per second, reddening and vibrating as it cooled. This "mushroom cloud" occurred at about 30,000 feet above ground. Beneath that cloud, all that was left of the area of the blast site were particles of jade green radioactive glass that was produced by the heat of the reaction. This brilliant light had penetrated the early morning skies with such power that residents from a faraway neighboring community would swear that the sun came up twice that day.
Scientists who helped to invent the Atomic Bomb under the Manhattan Project: Robert Oppenheimer, David Bohm, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Otto Frisch, Rudolf Peierls, Felix Bloch, Niels Bohr, Emilio Segre, James Franck, Enrico Fermi, Klaus Fuchs, and Edward Teller.