Name ______Date ______Period ______# ______
Modern Marvels
The Manhattan Project (50 minutes)
1. At 5:30 am on July 16, 1945, detonation of the first ______bomb was carried out in an area of the New Mexico desert known as Jornado del Muerto (Journey of Death).
3. Why did many of the German scientists flee Germany12 years prior to the detonation of the first atom bomb?
4. In 1938, ______scientists discovered nuclear fission in uranium which was the “key to opening Pandora’s Box”.
5. Which prominent scientist did Szilard get to sign the warning letter to FDR about German’s discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium?
On October 11, 1939, FDR formed the Advisory Committee on Uranium.
6. On December 7, 1941, the attack on ______by the Japanese forced the United States into WWII. This moment in history forced the Americans to take a heightened interest in the development of an atom bomb.
7. The Army Corps of Engineers General Groves was placed at the helm of the Manhattan Project. Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard discovered that a ______reaction with uranium could happen. They formed a nuclear reactor which consisted of a pile with layers of graphite that were embedded with balls of uranium. This showed that nuclear energy could be released in a controlled way through a reactor or cataclysmically in a bomb.
8. Which isotope of uranium was needed as fuel for the atom bomb?
9. Oppenheimer was the assigned as lead scientist at Los Alamos, NM.
10. On December 28, 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved another ______for the building of industrial facilities that would extract the U-235.
11. How much U-235 did Oppenheimer and his team say would be needed to power the atom bomb? This was 10 times the required amount.
12.Which method of extraction of U-235 was used in Oakridge, TN? Electromagnetic separation or gaseous diffusion
13. In Los Alamos, the design of “The Gadget” was a ______design. Inside the bomb a cannon would fire one piece of radioactive uranium to another at 3000 ft/sec.
14. Plutonium was discovered in 1941 and would be a better fuel because it was______as likely to undergo a fission reaction and could be produced on a larger scale by irradiating plutonium in nuclear reactors. This prompted the building of three production reactors in ______, WA on August 27, 1943.
15. By September 1943, Groves decided that a gaseous diffusion plant should also be built at Oakridge, TN.
16. Plutonium had impurity problems which had to be analyzed carefully.
17. February 1945 the first U-235 bomb was built and named ______for its small size. This bomb was not tested before combat because they only had enough U-235 for one bomb at that time.
18. The plutonium implosion device (bomb) named ______was approved in March and tested in July 1945.
19. On April 12, 1945, FDR dies unexpectedly and VP Harry Truman was brought into office. He had ______prior knowledge of the Manhattan Project and had to be debriefed extensively.
20. In June 1945, Colonel Tibbets and his unit moved to TinianIsland in the Pacific (1450 miles from Tokyo) where the B-29s were housed.
21. On July 16, 1945, the ______Test was underway. It was a test of the first plutonium implosion device.
22. At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gaydropped the first atomic bomb“Little Boy” on ______, Japan. Over 130,000 people died.
23. August 9, 1945“Fat Man” (a plutonium implosion device) fell on ______, Japan.
24. On August 14, 1945, ______surrendered.