The Atomic Bomb

It was the thoughts of Albert Einstein that led to the creation of the atomic bomb. Albert E. predicted that mass could be converted into energy; this was later confirmed in 1932 by two scientists named John D. Crockfort and Ernest R. Walton.

The way the atomic bomb works is by fission. Fission is the process of splitting atoms to create energy. Fission was discovered in 1938. The material they split to create the energy is called uranium. Unfortunately, uranium was very hard to come by in the nineteen forty's so naturally they had to find a substitute; it was called plutonium.

There was a great rush to complete the atom bomb because of the threat other countries would have if they were the first to complete it. In 1942 the United States put the "Manhattan Project" into effect. The Manhattan Project was a project to speed up the creation of the atom bomb. The Manhattan Project included a work force of over one hundred thousand workers and took over three years to complete. All of this confusion was really a race against Germany to see who could complete the bomb faster. After completion of the bomb, The United States government found out that Germany had not even pursued production of the bomb.

The atomic bomb is capable or equal to one hundred tons of dynamite. On July sixteenth, 1945 at Trinity which is located in New Mexico the first ever atomic bomb was tested. It was equivalent to twenty thousand pounds of dynamite, and created a thirty-five thousand foot mushroom cloud.

At nine fifteen on August sixth in 1945, an atom bomb of fifteen kilotons was dropped on Hiroshima. It was detonated one thousand, eight hundred feet over the ground. The plane that dropped the bomb was the Enola Gay aircraft bomber. The same thing happened on August ninth over Nagasaki. The fatalities of Hiroshima were seventy thousand and Nagasaki forty thousand.

The affects of the atomic bomb, or death-causing factors are the blast wave, thermal and nuclear radiation. Radiation affects the skin and cell reproduction.

Now, The atomic bomb weighed only five pounds. The countries that are known to posess a bomb today are the US, Russia, Britain, France, India, and China.

Sources.

World Book Encyclopedia.

Encyclopedia Americana