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Manhattan Project Trivia Quiz

The Manhattan Project of 1940-45 brought together finest minds of the Allied countries to produce the first nuclear weapon. They succeeded, and knocked Japan out of the war, but left the shadow of nuclear death over mankind to this day.

A multiple-choice quiz by brian59. Estimated time: 5 mins.

Author
brian59

Time
5 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
107,208

Updated
Sep 30 23

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Average

Avg Score
6 / 10

Plays
8323

Awards
Top 20% Quiz

Last 3 plays: Penguinpoo (8/10), biguywaco (10/10), Guest 198 (7/10).

One at a Time - Single Page - Timed Game

Question 1 of 10

1. The Manhattan Project effectively started with a letter from two famous scientists to President Roosevelt in 1939, whom they warned of the possibility of nuclear weapons being developed by Germany. They were ...? Hint

Einstein and Szilard

Rutherford and Bohr

Einstein and Bohr

Oppenheimer and Feynmann

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Question 2 of 10

2. The Manhattan Project would not have come to fruition without an exceedingly able leader. In overall command was an Army General. What was his name? Hint

Vannevar Bush

Leslie Groves

Douglas MacArthur

"Vinegar Joe" Stillwell.

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Question 3 of 10

3. Probably the General's wisest decision was to pick a theoretical physicist with little practical engineering experience as overall scientific leader of the Manhattan Project. Who was it? Hint

Ralph Serber

Harold Urey

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Richard Feynmann

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Question 4 of 10

4. Nuclear explosives require suitable fissile fuel, an excess of neutrons to sustain a chain reaction, and a sufficient mass to sustain fission of most of the available fuel. This mass is called what? Hint

Critical mass

Self-sustaining mass

Available mass

Fissile mass

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Question 5 of 10

5. Only two elements were fissile (i.e. broke into two roughly equal daughter nuclei) with thermal (i.e. slow) neutrons and produced one or more further neutrons to sustain the chain reaction. These were ...? Hint

Plutonium 238 and Thorium 233

Uranium 238 and Plutonium 238

Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239

Uranium 239 and Thorium 233

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Question 6 of 10

6. The first controlled nuclear chain reaction was conducted at the University of Chicago in 1942 by the great Enrico Fermi, using natural uranium and neutron moderating or slowing by graphite. In what building was this first "atomic pile" located? Hint

Tennis courts

Squash courts

Handball courts

Swimming pool

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Question 7 of 10

7. To achieve nuclear detonation it is necessary to assemble the required mass in microseconds before the developing chain reaction blows the components apart. What two methods were employed? Hint

Gun and implosion

Compression and detonation

Compression and explosion

Gun and explosion

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Question 8 of 10

8. Most of the theoretical work on the atomic bomb, and all of the final assembly, was conducted at a secret site in New Mexico where a whole town was erected in secret around a former boys' school. What is the name of the place? Hint

Dugway

Los Alamos

Alamogordo

White Sands

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Question 9 of 10

9. After the first nuclear explosion at 5:30 AM on July 16th 1945, at the so-called Trinity site, the erudite Robert Oppenheimer was reminded of the following quotation: Hint

Now we are all sons of bitches!

I saw a pale horse, and its rider was named Death

Don't expect to die a natural death!

I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds

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Question 10 of 10

10. The Manhattan Project came to fruition with two nuclear blasts on the Japanese homeland at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. These blasts finished WWII, at a heavy cost in human life. What were the names of the B29 bombers which dropped the first nuclear bombs? Hint

The Great Artiste and Glamourous Glennis

Enola Gay and Bock's Car

Memphis Belle and G for George

Nostromo and Sulaco

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

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.

2. The Manhattan Project would not have come to fruition without an exceedingly able leader. In overall command was an Army General. What was his name?

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.

3. Probably the General's wisest decision was to pick a theoretical physicist with little practical engineering experience as overall scientific leader of the Manhattan Project. Who was it?

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.

7. To achieve nuclear detonation it is necessary to assemble the required mass in microseconds before the developing chain reaction blows the components apart. What two methods were employed?

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.

9. After the first nuclear explosion at 5:30 AM on July 16th 1945, at the so-called Trinity site, the erudite Robert Oppenheimer was reminded of the following quotation:

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.

Source: Author brian59

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