Manhattan Project Trivia Quiz

Answer: Einstein and Szilard

Einstein had no further hand in the bomb development. Szilard became an effective campaigner against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1923, interestingly for the photoelectric effect, rather than the much better known Theory of Relativity. Szilard was also a Nobel laureate.

Answer: Leslie Groves

Leslie Groves was a colonel in the Army Engineers. Initially disappointed not to get a field command, he more than served his country in the Manhattan Project, named after his previous command in the Manhattan Engineer District. Bush (no relation to either of the Georges) was scientific advisor to several presidents in the 1940s. MacArthur and Stillwell were brilliant field commanders.

Answer: J. Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer was probably the greatest physicist NOT to win the Nobel Prize. He developed theories of condensed matter and even Black Holes, thirty years in advance of his time. He fell foul of the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the McCarthy era. Serber worked on the Manhattan Project as did Feynmann. Urey discovered deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and developed a model of Earth's primordial atmosphere.

Answer: Critical mass

Early calculations indicated a critical mass of several hundred pounds. This was later revised to only a few pounds. Associated shielding and detonating high explosives resulted in the earliest nuclear weapons being very large and heavy - 12,000 pounds or more.

Answer: Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239

Uranium 235 was separated painstakingly from the much more abundant Uranium 238 in natural Uranium by gaseous diffusion of Uranium hexafluoride through thousands of barriers, or as painstakingly by electromagnetic separation by Calutrons. Plutonium 239 was produced by the transmutation of Uranium 238 in reactors at Hanford, Washington.

Answer: Squash courts

The squash courts used for the first test were actually underneath the seating area of a football stadium. It was a walled-in space that could be flooded with water if necessary. There was, in fact, a vogue for "swimming pool" reactors after the war when ordinary water was used as both coolant and shielding agent.

Answer: Gun and implosion

Plutonium 239 reacts quicker than Uranium 235, hence the quicker implosion method, using focused shock-waves from a sphere of high explosive impinging on a hollow sphere of plutonium, was used at Alamagordo and Nagasaki; the gun method, using a subcritical "bullet" of Uranium 235 fired by a small cannon into a target of the same material. This was used in the Hiroshima bomb.

Answer: Los Alamos

Los Alamos continued to be the most secret town in the U.S. until well after the Cold War. Dugway is the U.S. Army chemical weapons test range in Utah. Alamogordo was the site of the first nuclear explosion and White Sands was a missile testing area close by.

Answer: I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds

Oppenheimer's interest in Hindu theology is apparent in this quote from the Baghavad Gita, which he read in Sanskrit and then translated. Although some translations use the word "shatterer", he translated the verse with the word "destroyer". Kenneth Bainbridge was quoted as saying, "Now we are all sons of bitches!", after witnessing the Trinity shot. "I saw a pale horse, and its rider was named Death", is, of course, from the Book of Revelation.

Answer: Enola Gay and Bock's Car

The Great Artiste was a weather observation plane on the Hiroshima raid.Glamourous Glennis was the name Chuck Yeager gave to his P51 and X-1 rocket plane (after his wife). Memphis Belle was a B17 which survived a record number of operations over Nazi Germany, G for George took part in the Dambusters' raid, Nostromo and Sulaco were Ripley's spaceships in the Aliens series.