Atomic+Bomb


 * ATOMIC BOMB!** by Aspen King & Ashley Hooper

In 1935-45, more than $2 billion was spent on the Manhattan Project. They needed a specific "enriched" part of Uranium, Uranium-235, but it's an isotope of Uranium-238, which is completely useless, but since their chemical makeup is almost the same, they can't be separated by chemical extraction, only mechanical methods work. They used gas centrifuge to get the lighter Uranium-235 from the heavier non-fissionable U-238. Atomic bomb or also called A-bomb, weapon deriving its explosive force from the release of atomic energy through the splitting of heavy nuclei. The first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945. It all started in 1940 like two years after the German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered nuclear fission. There are eight states that have successfully detonated nuclear bombs: U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. There were about 220,000 people that died when the nuclear bomb was dropped on Japan, in the beginning of the Second World War.



The most powerful atomic bomb produced and tested by the U.S. had provided a force of only 5 mega tonnes (a tonne is 1,000 kg) TNT!!! That was 2,500 times greater than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The atomic bomb is based on the artificially induced phenomenon of nuclear fission. The atoms of radioactive elements like Uranium or Plutonium are bombarded with slow neutrons, which makes them unstable and they split into lighter elements, releasing tons of energy in the process. Along with the energy release, more neutrons are released in the process, which subsequently cause the fission of more atoms, triggering a 'Chain Reaction'. The explosion of an atomic bomb is the triggering of such an uncontrolled fission chain reaction.



"Encyclopedia.com/ Atomic Bomb." //Encyclopedia.com//. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov 2010. . Bellis, Mary. "History of the Atomic Bomb & The Manhattan Project." //About.com//. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov 2010. . 