It was July 16th, 1945 in the New Mexican desert when the first atomic weapon was test by the United States of America. This was the start of the Nuclear Age of weapons and the start of the competition to make nuclear weapons between nations. The United States was the first nation to develop nuclear weapons, then the USSR, Great Britain, France, and The People’s Republic of China, in that order. The Soviet Union (USSR) was the United States’ main competitor in this new arms race to make the most powerful nuclear weapons and the most of them. The arms race lead to spying on one another, and the invention of new weapons and technological advancements for the world.
The first nuclear weapons were developed by the United States in a top secret project called The Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was so secret when it was developing and testing nuclear weapons that not even the Vice President Truman knew about it. Joseph Stalin was informed about the project because of spies and since he knew about it he started up the USSR’s development of nuclear weapons. By August in 1945 the nuclear weapons were ready for war. The first atomic bomb was used on August 6th, 1945 on Hiroshima, Japan. The type of nuclear bomb that was dropped was called the “little boy”. It had an oblong shape and was parallel sided. The Little Boy used uranium 235 as its fissable material. The design had a large amount of uranium on one side of the bomb and a small amount on the other side. A “gun” inside the bomb would shoot the small amount of uranium at the large amount which when all was together in one mass would cause the mass to become critical causing an explosion. This bomb destroyed 60,000 of the 90,000 buildings within 9.5 mile radius of the blast. 60,000 – 80,000 people died from the blast, according to Ivor Mantanle. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki was called the “fat boy”. It used plutonium as its fissable material and relied on implosion for detonation. Around
40,000 – 45,000 people were killed from the bomb and about 40,000 people were injured from it. Today people are still being affected by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan 68 years ago. The radiation and fallout from the bombs are causing radiation sickness, high incidences of cancer, abnormal births and more. The full effect that the radiation has on genetics is still unknown.
Thermonuclear bombs, also known as hydrogen bombs were developed by the United States in the early 1950s. They were similar to atomic weapons in that they still used uranium fission, but the hydrogen bomb also uses hydrogen fusion to increase the energy yield of the bomb. Hydrogen bombs are more powerful than nuclear bombs because nuclear bombs have a critical mass amount to start the chain reaction of the bomb which limits its explosive force, but hydrogen bombs do not have an explosive limit.
sources
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/arms-race
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/nuclear-arms-race
This is a really interesting post but it does not really explain how nuclear bombs work and were developed scientifically. You do explain the basics and go over the history but not the science as much. You did not talk about the scientists that worked on this project like J Roberts Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves. You also did not mention the specifics of how the bombs work. You mentioned that one used plutonium and the other used uranium but you never explained how the implosion worked with the plutonium or why the uranium exploded when a small pieces hits a big piece. Either way this was a well done blog.