Atomic Bomb :: essays research papers

Atomic bombs were the frontmost nuclear weapon systems to be smashed, tested, and used. In the fresh 1930s physicists in Europe and the United States realized that the fission of uranium could be used to create an perfectly powerful explosive weapon. In fearful 1939, German American physicist Albert Einstein sent a earn to U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt that described this discovery and warned of its potential development by new(prenominal) nations. The U.S. government established the top secret Manhattan Project in 1942 to develop an atomic device. The leader of the Manhattan Project was U.S. Army Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves. His team, working(a) in several locations but in large part at Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, designed and built the first atomic bombs.The first atomic explosion was conducted, as a test, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. The energy released from this explosion was equ ivalent to that released by the explosion of 20,000 tons of TNT. Near the end of World War II, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It followed with a second bomb against the city of Nagasaki on August 9. harmonize to U.S. estimates, 60,000 to 70,000 people were killed by the Hiroshima bomb, called Little Boy, and about 40,000 by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, called Fat Man. Japan agreed to Allied terms of surrender on August 14th. These are the only times that a nuclear weapon has been used in a conflict between nations.Fusion bombs, as well called hydrogen or atomic bombs, were developed and tested in the previous(predicate) 1950s, but these have never been used in warfare. A thermonuclear device depends on a fission reaction to produce extreme heat that causes hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium to come together, or fuse, but the of import energy source for thermonuclear devices comes from the fusion re action, not the triggering fission reaction. For to a greater extent information on this type of bomb, see Hydrogen Bomb.