Uranium

In early 1939 scientists found out that German scientists knew how to split a uranium atom, this raised fear because of the possibility that the Nazi’s could produce mass destruction with a bomb. Scientists who fled persecution, like Albert Einstein agreed to inform president Roosevelt about the dangers of atomic technology. In late 1941 the American effort to produce an atomic bomb received the name, “The Manhattan Project.” In the beginning research was conducted at Columbia University,…

On August 6th, 1945, two pieces of uranium were slammed together 600 meters above Hiroshima, initiating an explosive chain reaction. People near ground zero were instantly vaporized. Simultaneously, a huge cloud of dust and sand was thrown up in the air, which was described by survivors as: “the air turned dark and filled with a yellow cloud like poison gas” (Sheinkin, 357), This was all caused by the most famous - or for that matter infamous - weapon in the world - the atom bomb. The atom bomb…

The Atomic Bomb and Nuclear Fusion The atom bomb was created in the summer of 1945. It was created under the name "Manhattan Project" as to retain secrecy. Only a dozen trusted scientist knew about the project; J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, DuPont's Crawford Greenewalt and Kellogg's Percival Keith, MIT's Vannevar Bush, Harvard's James B. Conant, and Berkeley's Ernest O. Lawrence. The atom bomb changed the world in multiple ways. It led to the creation of "artificial radioactivity".…

fission. Fission occurs when radioactive elements split into smaller elements with intermediate mass. In the case of uranium-235, with each decay process, a neutron is released (Sarquis). With these extra neutrons, a new reaction can take place with another uranium-235 atom and continue as such, causing a chain reaction. This process releases a lot of energy - 215 MeV, to be exact (“Uranium-235 Fission”) - and this energy can be harnessed to produce heat, nuclear reactors use this. A nuclear…

of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer were in-charge of the Project . The members of the committee combined their expertise, technology, science and finance. The success of the Manhattan Project was when a uranium bomb called “Little Boy” and a plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The success was a result of the collaboration between both the scientific and the engineering disciplines. Communication and efficiency amongst…

Elements above the atomic number 95 are produced in a particle accelerator by accelerating a small charged nuclei (such as Helium, Boron or Carbon) in a particle accelerator to combine with a heavy nucleus (often of a previously made transuranic element) target. The transuranic elements have short half-lives as the atomic number increases. The smaller nuclei combines within the target nucleus, creating a new unstable nuclide or radioactive isotope. The high speeds are required to overcome the…

Radon is a colorless chemically-unreactive inert gas. You cannot see it, smell it or taste it. The atomic radius is 1.34 angstroms and it is the heaviest known gas. Radon is nine times denser than air. Because it is a single atom gas it easily penetrates many common materials like paper, low density plastic, most paints, and building materials like gypsum board, concrete block, wood paneling, and most insulations. Radon was discovered by Ernest Rutherford and Robert B. Owens in 1899.…

The husband and wife team of Pierre and Marie Curie became interested in Becquerel’s discovery (The Discovery of Radioactivity). While experimenting with their own uranium-containing ore, they came up with the term "radioactivity" to describe the spontaneous emissions that they studied (The Discovery of Radioactivity). That word helped shape how we view the world forever. Radiation became the newest scientific find…

fission chain reaction, using either plutonium or uranium for the reaction. The nuclear fission reaction constitutes an element like plutonium or uranium being subjected to extreme pressures until its neutrons split. The splitting then produces a fission of the large atoms to create new and smaller neutrons and atoms as the byproducts of the reaction as well as radiation. The neutrons usually speed up due to heat and splits before striking other uranium/or plutonium atoms so as to create the…

Atoms are units that compose everything from the cosmos and beyond. The nucleus of each of these particles is known as nuclear energy. Nuclear energy can be used to generate electricity as it must go through the process of nuclear fission. Power plants, also known as nuclear reactors, are machines that control nuclear fission and produce electricity. In Europe, there are around 185 power plants used, whereas the United States only uses about 99 power plants. Considering it has limited usage in…