I'm currently researching programming education and other STEM education, and I've found that when I try to find the source of it, I end up with something terrible.

But so far, I seem to be the only one who has tied it to that.

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Recently, I watched,

NHK BS Premium: Frankenstein's Temptation "The Birth of the Atomic Bomb: Scientists' Crime and Punishment

(Replayed again today at 11:45)

It's the "Manhattan Project."

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This time, I would like to talk about it from an engineering perspective.

(1) Sudden success in the first experiment

On July 16, 1945, three weeks before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the "Trinity Experiment" was conducted to test the detonation of a plutonium bomb, the Fat Man.

"The experiment suddenly succeed?"

I thought.

It was unimaginably difficult to control the detonation (implosion) of a protonium core by uniformly applying the same pressure in two millionths of a second.

Without the present technology of of GSP and EtherCAT, it would have been very difficult to achieve such high precision timing.

Implosion is the question of whether you can crush a tomato without destroying it, and it is the process of using explosives to compress a tomato into a smaller size, like a ping-pong ball or a pachinko ball, without bursting it.(They achieved this by induced detonation of explosives of different properties.)

As an engineer, I thought , "Well, out of a hundred times, they probably succeeded one time on a whim."

Before the Trinity experiment, I'm sure they conducted many preliminary tests of implosion, but I couldn't find out how they judged the success or failure of those tests.

(2) The atomic bomb was dropped on Japan only three weeks after the first test (Trinity experiment).

"Could it be weaponized in just three weeks?"

To begin with, transporting a weapon with nuclear material from the US mainland to Japan was insane.

Although the probability was low, there was also the possibility of a misfire, and the carrier may be exposed to radiation.

In the first place, there were very few people who understood the horror of the atomic bombing in those days.

(In fact, there was an accident in which a researcher who stepped over a nuclear material died instantly.)

(3) Successful explosion on the first try

This was also a great thing. Bomb duds are a fact of life. "It's not uncommon for a bomb to be dropped, but fail to explode.

Generally, "first use weapons" are going "duds," but the second and third detonated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki without fail.

It was not normal.

Seriously, if only the U.S. had dropped just one unexploded bomb on Japan...

Well, the U.S. would never give its top secret to an enemy country.

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In other words, the Manhattan Project was not just a project to develop an atomic bomb, but it was a plan from the beginning to use it as a weapon (storage, transportation, and operation).

When we think of nuclear energy, we tend to be drawn to theories, energy, control, and so on.

As an engineer, I can't help but marvel at the "operational technology" (OT).

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Well, look at this US coronary vaccine development project, "Operation Warp Speed"

"I'm still afraid of that country when it gets serious."

I can't help but think so.