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Edwin M. McMillan
Edwin Mattison McMillan (September 18, 1907 – September 7, 1991) was an American physicist credited with being the first to produce a transuranium element, neptunium. For this, he shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seaborg. A graduate of California Institute of Technology, he earned his doctorate from Princeton University in 1933, and joined the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory where he discovered oxygen-15 and beryllium-10. During World War II, he worked on microwave radar at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and then on sonar at the Navy Electronics Laboratory, Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory. In 1942 he joined the Manhattan Project, the wartime effort to create atomic bombs, and helped establish its Los Alamos Laboratory where the bombs were designed. He led teams working on the gun-type nuclear weapon design, and also participated in the development of the implosion-type nuclear weapon. McMillan co-invented the synchrotron with Vladimir Veksler, and after the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Redondo Beach, California
Redondo Beach (Spanish for ) is a coastal city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, located in the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay region of the Greater Los Angeles area. It is one of three adjacent Beach Cities, beach cities along the southern portion of Santa Monica Bay. The population was 71,576 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, up from 66,748 in 2010 United States census, 2010. Redondo Beach was originally part of the 1785 Rancho San Pedro Spain, Spanish land grant that later became the South Redondo area. The primary attractions include Redondo Beach pier, Municipal Pier and the sandy beach, popular with tourists and a variety of sports enthusiasts. The Redondo Beach station, western terminus of the C Line (Los Angeles Metro), Metro Rail C Line (formerly the Green Line) is in North Redondo Beach. History The South Bay area was originally inhabited by the Tongva tribe of Native Americans. Archeological work in the nearby Chowigna, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glenn Seaborg
Glenn Theodore Seaborg ( ; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in this area also led to his development of the actinide concept and the arrangement of the actinide series in the periodic table of the elements. Seaborg spent most of his career as an educator and research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, serving as a professor, and, between 1958 and 1961, as the university's second chancellor. He advised ten US presidents—from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton—on nuclear policy and was Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1961 to 1971, where he pushed for commercial nuclear energy and the peaceful applications of nuclear science. Throughout his career, Seaborg worked for arms control. He was a signatory to the Franck Report and contributed to the Limited T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synchrotron
A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The strength of the magnetic field which bends the particle beam into its closed path increases with time during the accelerating process, being ''synchronized'' to the increasing kinetic energy of the particles. The synchrotron is one of the first accelerator concepts to enable the construction of large-scale facilities, since bending, beam focusing and acceleration can be separated into different components. The most powerful modern particle accelerators use versions of the synchrotron design. The largest synchrotron-type accelerator, also the largest particle accelerator in the world, is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, completed in 2008 by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It can accelerate beams of protons to an energy of 7 electron volt, teraelectro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Implosion-type Nuclear Weapon
Nuclear weapons design are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three existing basic design types: # Pure fission weapons are the simplest, least technically demanding, were the first nuclear weapons built, and so far the only type ever used in warfare, by the United States on Japan in World War II. # Boosted fission weapons are fission weapons that use nuclear fusion reactions to generate high-energy neutrons that accelerate the fission chain reaction and increase its efficiency. Boosting can more than double the weapon's fission energy yield. # Staged thermonuclear weapons are arrangements of two or more "stages", most usually two, where the weapon derives a significant fraction of its energy from nuclear fusion (as well as, usually, nuclear fission), . The first stage is typically a boosted fission weapon (except for the earliest thermonuclear weapons, which used a pure fission weapon). Its de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gun-type Nuclear Weapon
Gun-type fission weapons are fission-based nuclear weapons whose design assembles their fissile material into a supercritical mass by the use of the "gun" method: shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another. Although this is sometimes pictured as two sub-critical hemispheres driven together to make a supercritical sphere, typically a hollow projectile is shot onto a spike, which fills the hole in its center. Its name is a reference to the fact that it is shooting the material through an artillery barrel as if it were a projectile. Since it is a slow and asymmetrical method of assembly, weapons-grade plutonium cannot be used. The presence of the isotope 240Pu, with its high spontaneous fission rate, causes predetonation. It is extremely impractical to produce plutonium of the required isotopic purity in a reactor. Additionally, the required amount of highly enriched uranium is relatively large, and thus the overall efficiency is relatively low. The main reason fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Alamos Laboratory
The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret scientific laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and overseen by the University of California during World War II. It was operated in partnership with the United States Army. Its mission was to design and build the History of nuclear weapons, first atomic bombs. J. Robert Oppenheimer was its first director, serving from 1943 to December 1945, when he was succeeded by Norris Bradbury. In order to enable scientists to freely discuss their work while preserving security, the laboratory was located on the isolated Pajarito Plateau in Northern New Mexico. The wartime laboratory occupied buildings that had once been part of the Los Alamos Ranch School. The development effort initially focused on a gun-type fission weapon using plutonium called Thin Man (nuclear bomb), Thin Man. In April 1944, the Los Alamos Laboratory determined that the rate of spontaneous fission in plutonium bred in a nuclear reactor was t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atomic Bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). Yields in the low kilotons can devastate cities. A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as can release energy equal to more than 1.2 megatons of TNT (5.0 PJ). Apart from the blast, effects of nuclear weapons include firestorms, extreme heat and ionizing radiation, radioactive nuclear fallout, an electromagnetic pulse, and a radar blackout. The first nuclear weapons were developed by the Allied Manhattan Project during World War II. Their production continues to require a large scientific and industrial complex, primari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was directed by Major General Leslie Groves of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army program was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys, and subsumed the program from the American civilian Office of Scientific Research and Development. The Manhattan Project employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $ b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Navy Electronics Laboratory
The U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory (NEL) was created in 1945, with consolidation of the naval radio station, radar operators training school, and radio security activity of the Navy Radio and Sound Lab (NRSL) and its wartime partner, the University of California Division of War Research. NEL’s charter was “''to effectuate the solution of any problem in the field of electronics, in connection with the design, procurement, testing, installation and maintenance of electronic equipment for the U.S. Navy.''” Its radio communications and sonar work was augmented with basic research in the propagation of electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere and of sound in the ocean. History In November 1945, the Navy Radio and Sound Lab was renamed as Navy Electronics Laboratory. 80% of the Point Loma Military Reservation evolved into the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC) at the end of World War II. In turn NELC was merged into the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) in 1977. This even ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonar
Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects on or under the surface of the water, such as other vessels. "Sonar" can refer to one of two types of technology: ''passive'' sonar means listening for the sound made by vessels; ''active'' sonar means emitting pulses of sounds and listening for echoes. Sonar may be used as a means of acoustic location and of measurement of the echo characteristics of "targets" in the water. Acoustic location in air was used before the introduction of radar. Sonar may also be used for robot navigation, and sodar (an upward-looking in-air sonar) is used for atmospheric investigations. The term ''sonar'' is also used for the equipment used to generate and receive the sound. The acoustic frequencies used in sonar systems vary from very low ( infrasonic) to e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIT Radiation Laboratory
The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was a microwave and radar research laboratory located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was first created in October 1940 and operated until 31 December 1945 when its functions were dispersed to industry, other departments within MIT, and in 1951, the newly formed MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The use of microwaves for various radio and radar uses was highly desired before the war, but existing microwave devices like the klystron were far too low powered to be useful. Alfred Lee Loomis, a millionaire and physicist who headed his own private laboratory, organized the Microwave Committee to consider these devices and look for improvements. In early 1940, Winston Churchill organized what became the Tizard Mission to introduce U.S. researchers to several new technologies the UK had been developing. Among these was the cavity magnetron, a leap forward in the creation of microwaves that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microwave Radar
Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), direction (azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, map weather formations, and terrain. The term ''RADAR'' was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging". The term ''radar'' has since entered English and other languages as an anacronym, a common noun, losing all capitalization. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwave domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the objects. Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the objects and return to the receiver, giving information abou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
