Enrico Fermi

Are we alone in our universe? This is one question scientist Enrico Fermi first asked in his theory which was later named the Fermi Paradox, the apparent theory of the existence of other intelligent life civilizations in our universe. Using the conflict of scale and probability, the Fermi Paradox favors intelligent life in the universe, despite the lack of evidence of extraterrestrials. No present observations suggest there are technologically advanced civilizations living in our galaxy or…

Albert Einstein was escaping from Nazi persecution because he was Jewish. And Enrico Fermi was escaping from fascist Itay. They were both living in the United States. Nuclear facilities were located in Oak Ridge, Tennesee and Hanford, Washington, but the main assembly plant was located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The scientists had to…

for early uranium research. It wasn't until March 1940, John R. Dunning and his colleagues at Columbia University had demonstrated conclusively that uranium-235 was the isotope that fissioned with slow neutrons, not the more abundant uranium-238 as Fermi had guessed. This finding was important, because it meant that a chain reaction using uranium-235 was possible, but only if the isotope could be separated from the uranium-238 and concentrated into a critical mass. Considering that uranium-235…

everyday lives are the result of the first ever “controlled” nuclear chain reaction test held in an old squash court beneath Stagg Field at the University of Chicago in Chicago IL. Led by Enrico Fermi an Italian Physicist, the event took place on December 2nd 1942 in a small reactor called the Chicago Pile-1 which Mr. Fermi and his team of scientist created. The Chicago Pile-1 was interracial part of a secret initiative called the “Manhattan Project” to build an atomic weapon before Germany…

The Manhattan Project was a project that produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II. It all started when Einstein found out the Germans were working on a new and more powerful weapon for war. Einstein wrote a letter to the president which helped initiate the effort to build an atomic bomb. In December 1941 the government launched the Manhattan project. The project was originally named Development of Substitute Materials. It included over 30 different research and production…

Today we might know an atom being the smallest piece of an element that represent an element, but you might not know the whole story. It all being in 1803, when a curious guy, known as John Dalton, who proposed an “atomic theory” with spherical solid atoms based upon measurable properties of mass. Later on Dalton introduced his belief that atoms of different elements could be universally distinguished based on their varying atomic weights. John Dalton's research not only changed the face of…

Discuss the factors that led to the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki On December 8, 1941 the Americans declared war on the Japanese, one day after the Pearl Harbor bombing in Hawaii. The Japanese had their own war going without a real competitor since they were conquering the southern and northern Asia but didn’t have a strong army to fight the Chinese and the Korean. Most of south-east Asia was easily taken. The Japanese were allied with the Nazis which were…

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” That’s what the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, recalled when he watched the first ever test of the atomic bomb. Many scientists who made the atomic bomb were against using it because of the amount of destruction they could cause. I’m going to explain to you what caused the start of the Manhattan Project, why it is called the Manhattan Project, the goals of the project, who were the people in charge, and why they dropped the…

The atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (“Little Boy and “Fat Man”) killed a total of roughly 100-110 thousand people. There were more deaths than needed. The U.S. did not inform Japan of the bombing so that the women and children could escape. The U.S. should not have used atomic bombs against Japan to end World War II. What is an atomic bomb? Well, an atomic bomb is a bomb that derives its destructive power from a rapid release of nuclear energy by fission of heavy atomic…

The atomic theory was proposed by a chemist named John Dalton, but it was first discovered by a Greek philosopher named Democritus in 400 BCE. Democritus stated that matter was made of small hard particles called atomos. John Dalton’s theory can be called modern because it can be proven through experiments. John Dalton pointed out some major details about the atomic theory; All matter is composed of very small particles called atoms, atoms of a given element are identical, atoms can’t be…