Lienhard sees "modern" as something that has ended (we are now
postmodern or something else)
WWII made people more conservative, or at least more cautious
1960s--young people criticized science and technology (along
with the Vietnam war, etc.)
the idea that research can lead to technologies to win a war
led to technologies that many people were uncomfortable with
The nice neat scientific
world that had seemed possible in the
19th century was replace in the 20th with quantum mechanics,
relativity, and nuclear physics
atoms no longer were nice neat little particles
space and time were relative
one element could be
made into another--it was possible but not practical to make lead into
gold (the goal of medieval alchemists)
matter could be made into energy (e=m * c squared)
German scientists many of the key discoveries in
nuclear physics that made nuclear weapons possible, leading to fear in
the U.S.
that the Germans would build an atomic bomb.
some elements are unstable and will naturally change to
something else and release radioactivity
Henri
Becquerel discovered radioactivity as a property of uranium in
1896, Marie Curie
discovered other radioactive elements, but they didn't know what was
happening
Otto
Hahn , Lise
Meitner, and O.R. Frisch
worked in the 1930s to
understand the results of bombarding uranium with neutrons--realized
that the uranium fissioned.
by 1939 it was obvious and widely know that a
chain reaction might be possible because each atom that fissioned
released neutrons that could hit other atoms and cause them to fission
Refugee scientists in the U.S. feared a German
bomb. Leo Szilard composed
two letters for Einstein to sign warning President Roosevelt of the
dangers of a German atomic bomb, one in August 1939 and the other
in April 1940. Fear was widespread enough that U.S. and British
journals volunarily censored related scientific papers.
Germans were indeed working on a bomb, but got
stuck in a dead end. Supporters of Werner
Heisenberg say he did this on purpose.
Difficulties setting up such a big, uncertain research
and development project: the Manhattan Project
First organized under National Defense Research
Committee (approval for project Oct. 1941) then turned over to the army
in June 1942. The army put General Leslie Groves in
charge.
The first thing to do was prove a chain reaction
was possible. That effort was led by Enrico
Fermi , first at Columbia then at the University of Chicago.
The first successful chain
reaction took place Dec. 2, 1942 in a small reactor built in a
squash court at the Univ. of Chicago.
Providing fuel
for the bomb was a tremendous technical challenge--must separate
uranium-235, which is less than 1% of the uranium mined and differs in
weight by only .13%. Two methods of separation: a cyclotron and
gaseous diffusion of uranium hexaflouride (the only gaseous compound,
but one that is both poisonous and corrosive) were set up at Oak Ridge , Tenn.,
using TVA power. The other alternative is to make plutonium
by chain reactions--reactors to do this were built in Hanford,
Washington.
Robert
Oppenheimer led the effort to design the bomb and said he needed to
bring scientists together at a single laboratory. Los Alamos
opened in March 1943. Developed two bomb designs, one using
uranium and one using plutonium. The plutonium design was tested
in the Trinity
test near Alamogordo NM on July 16, 1945. Exploded with the force
of 20,000 tons of TNT.
Germany was clearly defeated and the Japanese
were retreating--was it necessary to use the bomb?
Could there have been a demonstration and warning
instead? Would it have been used in Europe or was racism a factor?
After spending $2 billion would the goverment
have been accused of wasting money if it wasn't used?
when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, the bomb
project was so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn't even know
about it. The bomb was used because having built it everyone
assumed that having built it they would use it.
three B-29 bombers set out for Hiroshima , Japan on
Aug. 6, 1945. The Japanese sounded the all-clear when they saw
only 3 planes. The Enola Gay dropped the 5 ton bomb and it
exploded with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT. 130,000 people
died within 3 months, 68% of the buildings of the city were destroyed.
A plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki
on Aug. 9, 1945. Exploded with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT.
Does it fit the theory of just war?
The scientists tried to prevent an arms race
from developing. Why did they feel so strongly, and did they have
any hope of success?
People were frightened by
the bomb and began to question the idea that technological progress was
always good
the cold war meant real fears that a nuclear war would start
Hiroshima made vivid the dangers of radioactivity, leading
to movies about mutant monsters (Godzilla,
1954)
young people in the 1960s began to reject the boring lives
their parents had wanted after WWII
Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1960, and public
concern about environmental issues grew rapidly
the Civil Rights Movement was showing the American people
that you can change the wrongs of society
Sputnik (the first artificial satellite) and computers
started a new technological age
The space program turned out in some ways to be a dead end
continuation of "modern," while the computer has taken us in very
different directions
