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Little Boy
Little Boy was a type of atomic bomb created by the Manhattan Project during World War II. The name is also often used to describe the specific bomb (L-11) used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress '' Enola Gay'' on 6 August 1945, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, and the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test. It exploded with an energy of approximately and had an explosion radius of approximately which caused widespread death across the city. It was a gun-type fission weapon which used uranium that had been enriched in the isotope uranium-235 to power its explosive reaction. Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group at the Los Alamos Laboratory. It was the successor to a plutonium-fueled gun-type fission design, Thin Man (nuclear bomb), Thin Man, which was abandoned in 1944 after technical difficulties were discovered. Little Boy used a charge of co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little Boy Bomb
Little is a synonym for small size and may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Little'' (album), 1990 debut album of Vic Chesnutt * ''Little'' (film), 2019 American comedy film *The Littles, a series of children's novels by American author John Peterson ** ''The Littles'' (TV series), an American animated series based on the novels Places *Little, Kentucky, United States *Little, West Virginia, United States Other uses *Clan Little, a Scottish clan *Little (surname), an English surname *Little (automobile), an American automobile manufactured from 1912 to 1915 *Little, Brown and Company, an American publishing company * USS ''Little'', multiple United States Navy ships See also * * *Little Mountain (other) *Little River (other) *Little Island (other) Little Island can refer to: Geographical areas Australia * Little Island (South Australia) * Little Island (Tasmania) * Little Island (Western Australia) Canada * Little Island (Lake Kagawong), Ontario ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Birch (geophysicist)
Albert Francis Birch (August 22, 1903 – January 30, 1992) was an American geophysicist. He is considered one of the founders of solid Earth geophysics. He is also known for his part in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During World War II, Birch participated in the Manhattan Project, working on the design and development of the gun-type nuclear weapon known as Little Boy. He oversaw its manufacture, and went to Tinian to supervise its assembly and loading into ''Enola Gay'', the Boeing B-29 Superfortress tasked with dropping the bomb. A graduate of Harvard University, Birch began working on geophysics as a research assistant. He subsequently spent his entire career at Harvard working in the field, becoming an associate professor of geology in 1943, a professor in 1946, and Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology in 1949, and professor emeritus in 1974. Birch published over 100 papers. He developed what is now known as the Birch-Murnaghan equation of state in 1947. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Thin Man
''The Thin Man'' (1934) is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally published in a condensed version in the December 1933 issue of '' Redbook''. It appeared in book form the following month. A film series followed, featuring the main characters Nick and Nora Charles, and Hammett was hired to provide scripts for the first two. Plot The story is set in New York City during the Christmas season of 1932, in the last days of Prohibition in the United States. The main characters are Nick Charles, a former private detective, and Nora, his socialite wife. Nick, the son of a Greek immigrant, now spends most of his time in San Francisco managing his late father-in-law's businesses in between heavy drinking sessions. While in a New York speakeasy, Charles meets Dorothy, the now grown-up daughter of a former client, Clyde Wynant, who says she is trying to contact the father she has not seen since her parents' divorce. Two days later, Nick sees a newspaper report of the shooti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Thin Man (film)
''The Thin Man'' is a 1934 American Pre-Code Hollywood, pre-Code comedy-mystery film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and based on the The Thin Man, 1934 novel by Dashiell Hammett. The film stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, a leisure-class couple who enjoy copious drinking and flirtatious banter. Nick is a retired private detective who left his very successful career when he married Nora, a wealthy heiress accustomed to high society. Their Fox Terrier (Wire), wire-haired fox terrier Asta was played by canine actor Skippy (dog), Skippy. In 1997, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film's screenplay was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, a married couple. In 1934, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The eponymous "Thin Man" is not Nick Charles, but the man Charles is initially hired to find – Clyde Wynant (part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett ( ; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade ('' The Maltese Falcon''), Nick and Nora Charles (''The Thin Man''), The Continental Op ('' Red Harvest'' and '' The Dain Curse'') and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9. Hammett is regarded as one of the very best mystery writers. In his obituary in ''The New York Times'', he was described as "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." ''Time'' included Hammett's 1929 novel '' Red Harvest'' on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. In 1990, the Crime Writers' Association picked three of his five novels for their list of '' The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time''. Five years later, ''The Maltese Falcon'' placed second on '' The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time'' as selected by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Serber
Robert Serber (March 14, 1909 – June 1, 1997) was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project. Serber's lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific staff, and became known as '' The Los Alamos Primer''. The ''New York Times'' called him "the intellectual midwife at the birth of the atomic bomb." Early life and education He was born in Philadelphia, the eldest son of Rose (Frankel) and David Serber. His family was Jewish. His mother died in 1922 and his father married her cousin Frances Leof in 1928. Robert Serber earned his BS in engineering physics from Lehigh University in 1930 and earned his PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with John Van Vleck in 1934. He married Charlotte Leof (26 Jul 1911 – 1967), the daughter of his stepmother's uncle, in 1933. Shortly before receiving his doctorate, Serber was selected for a National Research Council postdoctoral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Alberta
Project Alberta, also known as Project A, was a section of the Manhattan Project which assisted in delivering the first nuclear weapons in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Project Alberta was formed in March 1945, and consisted of 51 United States Army, Navy, and civilian personnel, including one British scientist. Its mission was three-fold. It first had to design a bomb shape for delivery by air, then procure and assemble it. It supported the ballistic testing work at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, conducted by the 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Project W-47), and the modification of B-29s to carry the bombs (Project Silverplate). After completion of its development and training missions, Project Alberta was attached to the 509th Composite Group at North Field, Tinian, where it prepared facilities, assembled and loaded the weapons, and participated in their use. Origins The Manhattan Project began in October 1941, just before U.S. entry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nagasaki
, officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region have been recognized and included in the World Heritage Sites in Japan, UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. Part of Nagasaki was home to a major Imperial Japanese Navy base during the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War. Near the end of World War II, the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made Nagasaki the second city in the world to experience a nuclear attack. The city was rebuilt. , Nagasaki has an estimated population of 392,281, and a population density of 966 people per km2. The total area is . History Nagasaki as a Jesuit port of call The first recorded contact between Portuguese e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fat Man
"Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) was the design of the nuclear weapon the United States used for seven of the first eight nuclear weapons ever detonated in history. It is also the most powerful design to ever be used in warfare. A Fat Man device was Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki#Bombing of Nagasaki, detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second and largest of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare. It was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress ''Bockscar'' piloted by Major Charles Sweeney. Its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. The name Fat Man refers to the wide, round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium Nuclear reactor core, core, and later with improved cores. The first Fat Man to be detonated was the gadget in the Trinity (nuclear test), Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo Bombing an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Weapon Design
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 Empire of Japan, 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Fission
Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Nuclear fission was discovered by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. Hahn and Strassmann proved that a fission reaction had taken place on 19 December 1938, and Meitner and her nephew Frisch explained it theoretically in January 1939. Frisch named the process "fission" by analogy with biological fission of living cells. In their second publication on nuclear fission in February 1939, Hahn and Strassmann predicted the existence and liberation of additional neutrons during the fission process, opening up the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. For heavy nuclides, it is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cordite
Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in Britain since 1889 to replace black powder as a military firearm propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance. These produce a subsonic deflagration wave rather than the supersonic detonation wave produced by brisants, or high explosives. The hot gases produced by burning gunpowder or cordite generate sufficient pressure to propel a bullet or shell to its target, but not so quickly as to routinely destroy the barrel of the gun. Cordite was used initially in the .303 British, Mark I and II, standard rifle cartridge between 1891 and 1915. Shortages of cordite in World War I led to the creation of the "Devil's Porridge" munitions factory ( HM Factory, Gretna) on the English–Scottish border, which produced around 800 tonnes of cordite per week. The UK also imported some United States–developed smokeless ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
