WEBVTT - The Manhattan Project Part One 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:14.600 Technology, What tex Stop from host Coom. Hey there, and 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.119 welcome to Text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm joining me 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.240 in the studio is my good friend and colleague Den 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.119 Boland's Den, welcome back to the show. Hey, thanks for 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.560 having me. Fact. You know, I have to say I 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:30.920 worked on an opening joke for this but at uh 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:34.280 but at this point I thought, you know, I don't 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.919 want to disparage the gravity of what we're doing anything 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:42.440 less than a few tangents or puns in this story, 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.280 because this is a fascinating story. It's a fascinating story, 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.440 and and you can't get around the fact that the 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:53.720 end of the story is massively tragic, right Like, like 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.200 there's there's a ton of things that we can talk about, 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:58.640 and what we are talking about is the Manhattan Project. 0:00:58.720 --> 0:00:59.960 And I'm gonna go ahead and let you guys know, 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:02.960 this sucker is going to be a two parter because 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:05.560 in order to cover the Manhattan Project, you have to 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:07.960 have an understanding of what was going on in physics 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.280 leading up to the beginning of the project, which will 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.479 be this episode, and then there's another episode that will 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:17.640 be all about the actual developments of the project itself. 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:22.760 And this is complicated for multiple reasons. One, nuclear physics 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.480 not straightforward as it turns out. Yeah, actually lots of 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:29.720 pressure because of the implosion technique. But we'll get into 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.680 that in episode two. Also politics, a lot of politics. 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.120 I mean, obviously, the Manhattan Project was formed as a 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.680 result of World War Two. If World War Two had 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:44.200 not been happening, the Manhattan Project probably would not have 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.520 been formed, and nuclear power may have either been pushed 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:50.880 back by quite a bit or someone else would have 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.520 ended up developing it ahead of the United States. So, uh, 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.400 both of those things. Science and politics by themselves are complex. 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:01.240 And when you come buying the two and you try 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:05.040 to make science work within the realm of a political structure, 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.080 it gets messy. Yeah, and not not in like a 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:11.520 cool I got my hair cut at a nice salon. 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.520 Look at me. Messy, not like rolled out of bed. Oh, 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:18.400 this didn't hike me any time at all. Right, messy 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.520 as in, uh, is a massive loss of blood and treasure. 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.560 I think we're looking at the equivalent of when it 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:31.720 got rolling thirty billion dollars you you know, yeah, today's money. 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.880 It all depends upon the well, it really depends upon 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.359 how you define the scope of the project, because that's 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:40.880 something else that's kind of confusing because you hear Manhattan 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:45.080 Project and you think, okay, uh, Manhattan Project, that's the 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.480 one that took place in oak Ridge, Tennessee, Hanford, Washington, 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:53.839 Los Alamos, New Mexico. Makes sense. We will explain all 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:56.280 of that as we go through. So in case you 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.600 weren't aware of, the Manhattan Project was the code named 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.440 the United States government gave to the the effort to 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:07.520 design and build an atomic bomb for use in World 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:10.760 War two. And in order for us to talk about 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.079 we have to go back way before World War two. 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.480 In fact, we have to go back before World War One. Yes, yeah, 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:18.920 we have to go all the way back to the 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.120 I guess the end of the nineteenth century, that is correct, 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:27.200 late nineteenth century. Uh. There was a fella by the 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:31.120 name of Henrie beccarell alright who had made an interesting 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:38.000 observation observing that some material, when placed against some plates, 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.920 would create a negative image. And he had assumed that 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:47.240 this material was phosphorescent, that it absorbed sunlight and then 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:52.160 given off some form of ray to create this image, 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.480 but later determined that he was mistaken that there was 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.160 no need for the sunlight. The stuff was giving off 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:03.240 the ray is by itself. And then you had the 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:08.080 Curies coming along who who went on to study this themselves. 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:14.240 Marie Cury coined the term radioactive radioactive with the word 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:20.120 ray in it. And so at this point there was 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.760 an understanding that certain elements had a type of energy 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:28.920 they could give off spontaneously, spontaneous radiation. And that is 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:34.560 the beginning, the nub that the kernel that forms the 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:40.480 the very center of the Manhattan Project's purpose. So building 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:44.280 on that we then have there's a guy in Nive. 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.320 He had a little theory. It was a special theory, 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.719 I mean relatively special man. Yes, yes, And that that 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:57.520 man you may know today through countless Internet memes Albert Einstein. Yes, yes, 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:04.039 Albert Einstein al to friends, was a brilliant physicist, obviously, 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.680 and it was all the way back in when Einstein 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:12.440 proposed the special theory of relativity, which, among many other things, 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:17.280 positive that energy and matter are pretty much interchangeable. And 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:21.960 this is where the the famous equation E equals MC 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:27.360 squared comes from. The E means energy, the M means mass, 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.320 The C squared C stands for the constant of the 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:34.320 speed of light through a vacuum. Keeping in mind that 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.279 light actually can travel at different speeds depending upon the 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.559 medium through which it travels. Travels more slowly through water 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:43.800 than through a vacuum, for example. So you take that 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.039 constant of lights the speed of light in a vacuum, 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.719 and you square it, so a number that's already huge 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:55.640 gets huger. That huge number, by the way, in case 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.919 you're wondering, is two seven, four hundred fifty eight meters 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.760 per second. Squaring that, you get eight point nine nine 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.559 times ten to the sixteen power. It's a big number. 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.800 So what that tells you if you look at that equation, 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:12.960 what that tells you is that a very tiny amount 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:17.040 of mass is equivalent to an enormous amount of energy, 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:20.880 and vice versa. An enormous amount of energy is equivalent 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.560 to a teeny tiny little bit of mass. So if 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:28.120 you were to have a physical process in which you 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:33.320 start with an atom and you split that atom, and 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:38.599 the two components of that split atom collectively have less 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:44.960 mass than the original atom, you can't destroy or create 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.200 energy or mass, but you can convert one to the other. 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:51.040 That mask gets converted into energy, essentially kinetic energy, which 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.320 gets converted into heat and then you get a whole 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.039 bunch of heat from it. Yeah, that's what Einstein had said. 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:58.560 He says, this is this is the way the universe works. 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:02.040 Energy and mass ultimately the same thing. And then there 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.680 were if I recall, there were three broad historical reactions. 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:11.240 Some people said nah, some people said maybe, and a 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:15.480 lot of people went oh, yeah, exactly, yeah, and and 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.360 so this really uh, you know, we're gonna be telling 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.400 about a lot about two different types of scientists. Theoretical 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:27.560 scientists not they're not theoretical they work in the realm 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:32.520 of theory, and experimental scientists who take theory, apply experiments 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.920 to test those theories and then find out if the 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.440 results either bear the theorial or it needs to be 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.920 tweaked or whatever. Right, So, uh. In nineteen eleven we 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:47.760 get another important development by a discovery by a fellow 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.880 named Ernest Rutherford. Now, Rutherford proposes a model of the 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.240 atom in which you have a nucleus of positive particles 0:07:55.520 --> 0:08:00.520 which are dubbed protons, and they're orbited by negatively charged 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:05.000 particles dubbed electrons. That's the Rutherford model of the atom. 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.280 And it's the simplest version question yes, just just for 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:10.720 you and the audience. I'm sure a lot of people 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:12.960 have wondered this when they were learning this. Why don't 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:16.000 you go with no trons, no tron's I mean that 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:18.760 sounds so much cooler because he was pro it's a 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:23.720 positive thing. Well, you know, like protons, electrons, protons, no trons. Oh, 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.560 I got you. But being being negative, those would be 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.920 the no trons because electrons are the agent through which 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:33.720 electricity is. You know, it's a matter of priority, and 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:36.440 that transcends a matter of marketing. But I'm saying, well, 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:38.320 we could even go back to the fact that Benjamin 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.400 Franklin was convinced that current means that that's the movement 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.160 of positively charged particles from one point to the other, 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:46.319 which is why current flows in the opposite direction of 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.280 actual electricity, which, by the way, it drives me crazy. 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:51.719 You know you've talked about it before, and which, by 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:53.400 the way, I think we could cut to the end 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.520 of the show because this means clearly that nuclear weapons 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.160 are should be the blame for those should be eight 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.520 at the at the field of Benjamin Franklin, like so 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:07.200 many things, the bad guy. But anyway, yeah, so Ernest Rutherford. 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:09.920 So he discovers this, He creates this model, and then 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:14.280 Neil's Bore, another important physicist, He refines that model. He 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:18.000 starts to concentrate on the quantum behavior of electrons, and 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:22.000 that's where we get the Bore model of Adams. And 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.560 then I'm going to skip ahead to nineteen nineteen, and 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:30.280 that's when Rutherford transmutes nitrogen into oxygen. This is something 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:34.040 that alchemists had been attempting to do for centuries, although 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.080 their form of transportation was more about lead into gold sure, sure, 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:40.199 or the philosopher's stone or whatever. But this is an 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:44.920 actual transmutation. This is a point where Rutherford uh crosses. 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:46.800 I don't want to say it as though he's like 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.560 doing something bad, but where he where he goes from 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.600 just a theory to the application the way we're talking 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:58.120 about demonstrating it in the real world, and uh this 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.280 triggers even more changes in our right. So, the way 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.520 he does this is he takes some nitrogen atoms and 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.160 he bombards them with something called alpha particles, and alpha 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:14.120 particles essentially, although he didn't know this yet, an alpha 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:19.079 particle is essentially two protons and two neutrons, also known 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:24.120 as a heli helium nucleus. So if you use a 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:27.160 helium nucleus, if you strip away the electrons, what you're 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:29.800 left with is essentially an alpha particle, and he but 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:33.320 bards these nitrogen adoms with that. That's what converts it 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:38.040 over into oxygen. So then we skip ahead by a 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.320 couple of decades, are well, a little more than a 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:46.440 decade to ninety two. Yes, this is when James Chadwick, 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.800 who was one of Rutherford's colleagues, discovers the nucleus of 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:54.880 an adom can, by the way, big year in physics. Yeah, 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:57.160 so he discovers that the nucleus of an adom can 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:01.240 also contain particles that have no charge at all, hanging out. 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:03.880 They're just they're they're they're kind of like that roommate 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:06.800 I used to have, who you know. I felt like, 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:08.719 come on, dude, just just pay your part of the 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:15.040 utilities already, come on. I'm sorry. I wasn't gonna be so. Yeah, 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:18.960 these are these are neutral. That's that's the neutrons. And 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.199 by this time there was an understanding now that the 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.800 atoms typically consisted of protons and neutrons and the nucleus 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.199 and orbited by a number of electrons that were equal 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.920 to the number of protons, and that's what balances out 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:36.280 the charge. There's a but oh, let's infomercial it. But wait, 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:39.640 there's more. There is more. Two things that you can 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.599 you can talk about, one which is really important in 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.160 nuclear physics, and one which is not going to really 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.480 play a part. One is that being that if you 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.520 have an atom that has an excess or of electrons 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.840 or too few electrons, it's an UH. It's an ion 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.439 of that particular atom. But you can also have a 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.880 different number of neutrons from the protons. You can have 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:06.199 a variety of them, and we call these different varieties 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:10.080 of these various atoms isotopes. So an isotope of an 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.800 atom is UH is a version of that atom that 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:17.079 has a specific number of neutrons. So that's important to 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:21.480 remember now. At the time when Chadwick made this discovery, 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:27.480 hydrogen was the the the lightest, the least massive of 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.920 all the elements at one, and the heaviest or the 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:33.640 one with the most mass was uranium at ninety two. 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:37.280 That number refers to the number of protons in the atom, 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:41.120 not the number of neutrons. So chemists had discovered that 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:43.199 the atoms of the of the same elements sometimes had 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.359 different weights. This is what led to the discovery of isotopes. 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.400 So they'd say, oh, well, here's a uranium atom, but 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:54.160 we've got this other uranium atom, and they they're chemically identical. 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.280 They're exactly the same chemically, but this other one's a 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:02.120 little heavier than this One's what gives what that doesn't 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:05.720 make sense, and that's where they discovered isotopes. So uranium 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:08.960 has three isotopes. All of them have ninety two protons 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.000 and ninety two electrons, because if they didn't, it wouldn't 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.200 be uranium. But it does have a different number of neutrons. 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.680 So you've got uranium two three eight. That's the most 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.240 common form of uranium found in nature. It has a 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:24.600 hundred forty six neutrons in the nucleus and it's nine 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.600 It makes up all natural uranium. So when you when 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:31.600 you go uranium hunting, odds are you going to find 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.520 you two thirty eight. Then you have uranium two thirty five, 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.720 which has a hundred forty three neutrons, and uranium two 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:41.400 thirty four, which has a hundred forty two neutrons, and 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:46.840 you two thirty five will become incredibly important in its discussion, 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:52.520 and you two thirty four is one of the decay products, right, yeah. Yeah. 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.960 So also in nineteen thirty two going on at the 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.560 same time, you had physicists J. D. Crow Croft and E. T. S. 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:06.360 Walton split a lithium atom into two helium nuclei. Uh, 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.080 the the protons and neutrons I was talking about by 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:13.640 bombarding the lithium with protons using a particle accelerator. And 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.080 this is the first example of someone splitting the atom 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:21.080 the very first time. Yeah, it is. In my opinion, 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.840 this is up there with the first human footfall on 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:30.200 the move. Yeah. This fundamentally changes everything, and it's strange 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.400 that we don't hear more people talk about it. Yeah, 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:37.760 a lot of people will talk about the early work 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.680 in nuclear fission, which we will get to, which happened 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:45.000 in a place that precipitated the need for ment projects. 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:50.200 So in California, same time as everything else, you had 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.880 a group with ernest O. Lawrence who will be incredibly 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:59.280 important in this conversation, Stanley Livingston and Milton White who 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.400 operated the first cyclotron on the Berkeley campus of the 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:06.160 University of California, and Lawrence would end up playing an 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:10.920 instrumental role in the Manhattan Project. Yeah. No, uh. For 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:15.800 everyone is wondering a cyclotron, it is a particle accelerator, 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:18.440 right right. It was this is the era where we 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.160 start getting the earliest particle accelerators. The Vandergraf would build 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.640 one as well, in a different style. Uh. And Lawrence 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:30.480 was was working on this early and not with the 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:35.280 goal of nuclear fission necessarily. It was part of particle 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:38.320 physics to understand more about the fundamental particles that make 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:42.840 up all the stuff around us. Uh. And it ultimately 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.880 would end up being used to help create the material 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:50.560 for nuclear weapons. Um. But at the time no one 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:55.000 had any concept of doing that. Ninety three there were 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.520 some early attempts to find a reliable way to split atoms, 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.080 but they're largely unsuc sccessful or very inefficient. They require 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.800 huge amounts of power. And I'll tell you why. Most 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:10.040 of them used protons fired at an atomic nucleus. So 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.680 here's the thing. Protons have a positive charge. Correct. Atomic 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.760 nucleus also has a positive charge because it's only made 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.000 up of protons and neutrons, So we are positive and positive. 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:22.600 So what happens if you put two ends, like two 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:27.680 northern ends of two different magnets together against each other. Yeah, 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.240 they do. It's uh, you know a lot like me 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.440 and Josh Clark, we just despite the fact we sit 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.040 right next to each other, there's just this repulsion. It's 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:40.520 the other one. It's kind of amazing, like, you know, 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.680 like if I start walking towards Josh's chair just rolls 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.600 the other way. Now, Josh and I get along just fine. 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:49.640 Obviously he was just recently on the episode tech Stuff, 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.360 so um. But yeah, it was really hard to get 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.280 a direct hit on a nucleus because of this these 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.400 light charges repelling one another. In fact, there were some 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.760 estimates that said that it only happened one every one 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:06.679 million tries non efficient way to split at him. So 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.639 while people were starting to think there might be a 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:14.320 way of getting some energy from this, like to use 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.199 this as a means of generating power or perhaps even 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:21.639 creating a weapon down the line, the efficiency was so 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:23.919 low that it didn't seem like it was going to 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:29.719 be uh a viable exactly, Like it's a good proof 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:35.560 of concept. Yeah, So Albert Einstein, Niels Bore, and Rutherford 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:37.400 all felt that the process would be great for getting 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:41.040 a better understanding of nuclear physics, but would remain impractical 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:44.720 for pretty much anything else. Now, Rutherford actually described the 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:49.359 idea of harnessing nuclear energy as moonshine. That was what 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:54.000 he called it. Einstein His version was saying, it's like 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:58.320 the ability to get a proton to to collide with 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.680 the nucleus would be akin to walking into an enormous 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.800 room that's pitch black and shooting at a couple of 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.359 birds flying around randomly through the right. Yeah, that was 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:10.760 his his comparison. Is no way to make it not 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.480 an accident, right and heels Boor said, it's pretty much 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.119 a long shot unless we figure out something else. And 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:20.119 then you had another fellow, a Hungarian physicist who was 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:25.320 living in the United States, Leo sciss Lard, and sciss 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.879 Lard hypothesized that if you use something else, not protons, 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.679 what have you used a beam of neutrons aimed at 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:36.000 an atom because neutrons have no charge, so it doesn't matter, 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:38.879 there's no repulsion there. Yeah, The only thing is that 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:43.959 how do you shoot a non charged particle? Because if 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:46.439 you're using protons, then all you can do all you 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:48.520 have to do is created a positive charge to repel 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.320 it or a negative charge to attract it and move 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:55.440 it that way, but a neutral one is a little trickier. Um. 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:57.960 But he thought, if you could do this, and if 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:02.720 the atom was large enough, it had its own neutrons, 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.480 sometimes when the atom splits up, it might give off 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:07.760 neutrons too. And if it gives off neutrons with enough 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:13.320 energy and you have enough atoms there, those neutrons could 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:17.520 collide with other atoms, which could cause them to break apart, 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:20.680 and those neutrons could go out and hit other atoms, 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:23.880 and each time you would be multiplying this effect. As 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.000 long as you had more than one neutron being given 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:28.600 off and as long as those were colliding with some 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.280 other atoms, this trend would continue until you were out 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:34.959 of stuff or the neutrons, or there just weren't enough 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:37.600 atoms for the neutrons to make contact, and you would 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.159 get a nuclear chain reaction which you could use to 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.480 either power or a city or blow one up. Yes, yes, 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:49.680 at that point they you know, the next question becomes like, well, yes, 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:55.040 at that point, the next question becomes a matter of control, 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:59.040 because you know it's all well and good from an 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:02.600 academic for suspective to say, oh, guys, look at this 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.760 neat thing that we think we can do. And then, 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.200 you know, for someone to say, okay, well let's let's 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:10.320 try it. Let's get the rubber on the road, and 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.439 then what do you think is going to happen? And 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.720 they say, well, one or two things. It's either going 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.840 to power the city or blow it up, right, but 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.200 we're pretty confident it's going to be one of those two. 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:26.040 So the next question is like, how do you make 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:30.360 this useful? Right? And for Leo, I'm gonna call Leo 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.080 because I'm just gonna Putcher his last name over otherwise, uh, 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:36.840 the Hungarian physicist. Uh. For Leo, the problem was that 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.359 when he was first trying this out, he was using 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:43.440 lighter atoms and he couldn't get these sustained reactions, so 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:45.640 he kind of he kind of thought, well, I guess 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:47.480 that's a bust. It seemed like a good idea, but 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:50.719 it's not working. So so so there it became an 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.280 academic question for a while because there was they weren't 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:56.160 He wasn't using the heavier atoms which would have created 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:58.919 a sustainable reaction. They would have been dense enough to 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:02.280 have that impact. Right, they don't decay in the same 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:04.720 way that other other ones might just take on the neutron, 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.080 and they wouldn't split apart in other words, So moving 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:10.879 on with four, we get another fellow who becomes very 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:16.239 important in Manhattan Project, Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist. He 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:18.800 begins to use neutrons to bobard atoms, and he figured 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:22.280 the uncharged particles wouldn't meet that same resistance as protons, 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:26.600 just as Leo had. He was right. He bombarded sixty 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:29.840 three different stable elements with neutrons and created thirty seven 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:33.320 new radioactive atoms. And he also found out that if 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.760 he used carbon and hydrogen, he could actually slow the 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.640 movement of the neutrons a little bit, and that would 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.160 actually increase the chances of a nucleus accepting a new neutron. 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.920 So you wanted to fire the neutrons fast, but not 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:49.680 too fast. You had to you had to control that. 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:55.000 Uh So he then bombarded uranium with neutrons. Had created something, 0:21:55.880 --> 0:21:58.600 but he had no idea what it was. In fact, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:00.560 no one was really sure at the time. There was 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:03.240 a lot of disagreement in the scientific community about whatever 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:05.880 Fermi had made, they were like, because it was new, 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.680 and because it was new, they didn't know, right. So yeah, 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:12.159 so they were wondering if it was transuranic, as in 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:16.399 a man made element that would not be found in nature, 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:19.520 or if Fermi had somehow managed to split up uranium 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:22.800 so that behave like lighter elements, because some of the 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:26.239 stuff that was left over it seemed really similar to 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:30.360 lighter elements on the elemental table. But how could that be? 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:34.520 It's certainly not magic. Yeah, And it's funny because he 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.400 had actually achieved nuclear fission but did not know it. 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:42.000 He didn't he didn't understand it enough to know that 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:44.560 that's what had happened at the time. And that takes 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:49.120 us to eight. And this is the event that really 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:53.200 creates the need for the Manhattan Project because it takes 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:58.360 place in Berlin. Now eight in Berlin, it was already 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:01.439 a very tumultuous time in up right. World War two 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:05.800 had not yet begun, but Germany had started to really 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:10.840 cause huge problems, including uh, cracking down on the Jewish 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:15.680 population already. Uh, and it was you know, the whole 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:20.840 Germany Austrian alliance was was an issue. And then there 0:23:20.840 --> 0:23:26.680 were rumblings about Germany possibly invading other countries and then 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:30.480 also spreading to you know, Italy as well. Yes, Italy 0:23:30.800 --> 0:23:35.639 was also invading African nations at the time, so this 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:40.520 was really a tumultuous period. So in Berlin, UH, Germany 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:44.200 was a place where there where particle physics, theoretical physics 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:48.240 had really blossomed at the end of the nineteenth century 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:52.639 beginning of the twentieth century, and you had a collection 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:57.800 of scientists who all were just interested in furthering our 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:01.359 understanding of the universe. They just happened to be in 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:05.040 a place where that understanding was going to be uh 0:24:05.280 --> 0:24:10.560 tilted toward the ends of the German government. So radiochemists 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:15.359 Auto Han and Fritz Strassman, we're using Ferms method of 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:19.640 bombarding atoms with neutrons, and they found that uranium nuclei, 0:24:19.920 --> 0:24:23.400 unlike other nuclei, didn't just absorb the neutrons. They broke 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:27.200 apart into two more or less equal pieces. They became 0:24:27.200 --> 0:24:31.960 fragments of uranium and radioactive barrium isotopes, which explained why 0:24:32.000 --> 0:24:35.359 some of the substances from firm's experiments resembled lighter elements 0:24:35.400 --> 0:24:40.520 because they were they were barium. So that was the 0:24:40.520 --> 0:24:42.840 the scientific explanation of what was going on with Fermi 0:24:42.880 --> 0:24:46.800 and Firm. He's like, huh, that's interesting. Um. What's also 0:24:46.880 --> 0:24:50.359