Manhattan Project Research Paper

The Manhattan Project was sparked by America’s fear of Nazi Germany’s capabilities of producing an nuclear bomb near the beginning of World War II. The top secret project consisted of research and development for building the first nuclear weapon during World War II. The Manhattan Project, spearheaded by Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie R. Groves, originally was just about the atomic bomb; however, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam started to work on a new project introduced by Enrico Fermi. The two together worked to create a higher yield bomb which resulted in the creation of a bomb 450 times more powerful than the previous atom bomb. The idea of the hydrogen bomb was first introduced by Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Prize winning Italian Physicist,

Niels Bohr then gave a lecture at Princeton University where Willis Lamb, an American physicist, was in attendance. Willis Lamb then passed this information to Enrico Fermi who eventually interpreted and understood the power of the newly discovered fission process (Badash). Fermi warned military leaders of the power of nuclear energy during a lecture to the United States Navy. However, it wasn't until Edward Teller sent a letter signed by Albert Einstein to United States President Teddy Roosevelt warning the United States that Nazi Germany was very likely to begin building atomic bombs, that the U.S. took action. The Manhattan Project began and Edward Teller was assigned a role in developing the fission bomb (atomic bomb), but neglecting his assigned role, he pursued a “super bomb” suggested by Enrico Fermi who hypothesized that a nuclear fission weapon could possibly trigger a bigger nuclear fusion reaction (hydrogen bomb). Edward Teller, who is mainly credited with the invention of the hydrogen bomb, was born in Budapest, Hungary into a Jewish family. He, like many of the great physicists of the time, was a

The Cold War was kept “cold” due to the fact that both sides had hydrogen bombs, and knew that if one side were to detonate a hydrogen bomb the other side would open fire back, causing tremendous casualties to both sides. This constant fear of catastrophic casualties led both sides to never fire upon each other with hydrogen bombs. However, if even a small hydrogen bomb were to be dropped under specific situations on to New York City, scientists estimate the bomb could result in 959,000 deaths and 1.5 million injuries. The bomb would also destroy 226 hospitals, twenty fire stations, and 432 schools (Mosher). This would cause many lasting effects past the initial casualties. It would take numerous years to rebuild all the schools and hospitals affected by the blast, causing many to lose jobs as well as halting education of many children. Furthermore, many people's health would be endangered due to the lack of hospitals for an extended amount of time causing many people to die of sickness and