Revolution To Power: Building of the Atomic Bomb

Akhil Kesaraju and Rohith Kesaraju Junior Division Group Website

Our topic is to find out the happening of atom bomb that revolutionized man's powers and what the process of building the atom bomb was. We chose this topic because of our visit to the Intrepid sea, air and space museum centered on the aircraft carrier Intrepid that served in World War II. We got interested in World War II and wandered to question of how a single weapon, atom bomb has revolutionized mans power and ended the World War. We wanted to find out what surrounded the building of the bomb including the 1.key processes, 2.the operation and key people, 3.political building and 4.Primary source interviews and their knowledge of the bomb. We started our research with visiting American Museum of Science and Energy, Oakridge and interviewing Mr. Benny Hauser there. Mr. Hauser is the EHS manager who worked in nuclear facility at Oakridge and was extremely helpful in explaining the key issues. We used Truman Presidential Library for many primary resources. We read the books, Manhattan Project, "Hiroshima" and, World War II for Kids. We got lot of information from several websites including pictures, videos, and original documents. We also interviewed two World War II veterans Mr. Blonde Puckett and Mr. James Budd Briggs.

After collecting all the necessary information and getting the interviews, we have compiled the information in to notes, pictures and videos. Then we have decided which information is important to the theme and categorized that information in to several subcategories, like background and development of the atom bomb, home front, war situation in Europe and Pacific, dropping of the bomb and after effects. We chose website as the category because we had lot of multimedia that we thought will add useful information to our project. It is easy to list the information as several tabs on the website. We wrote the summaries and added videos as additional sources. The NHD theme is Revolution, Reaction and Reform. Our theme is Revolution in man's power, Building of the Atom bomb. The discoveries that helped make this revolution happen are, research by Enrico Fermi bombarding elements with neutrons instead of protons to split the atom, research of radiochemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann finding fission reaction in Uranium where Uranium splits in to two equal pieces, and Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch's research and using Einstein's equation to discover the enormous energy in fission reaction. Albert Einsteins letter prompted President Roosevelt to initiate the Nuclear program. There was no political building or debate about atom bomb. Robert Oppenheimer and General Groves implemented the highly secretive Manhattan project to success. The nuclear facilities at Oakridge enriched uranium while Hanford refined Plutonium and Los Alamos successfully built the bomb. President Harry Truman had made the decision to drop the bomb. The bomb showed the power that can be harnessed from the atom and started the revolution in man's power.