Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Early Research on Fission: 1933–1943
- 3 The Early Materials Program: 1933–1943
- 4 Setting Up Project Y: June 1942 to March 1943
- 5 Research in the First Months of Project Y: April to September 1943
- 6 Creating a Wartime Community: September 1943 to August 1944
- 7 The Gun Weapon: September 1943 to August 1944
- 8 The Implosion Program Accelerates: September 1943 to July 1944
- 9 New Hopes for the Implosion Weapon: September 1943 to July 1944
- 10 The Nuclear Properties of a Fission Weapon: September 1943 to July 1944
- 11 Uranium and Plutonium: Early 1943 to August 1944
- 12 The Discovery of Spontaneous Fission in Plutonium and the Reorganization of Los Alamos
- 13 Building the Uranium Bomb: August 1944 to July 1945
- 14 Exploring the Plutonium Implosion Weapon: August 1944 to February 1945
- 15 Finding the Implosion Design: August 1944 to February 1945
- 16 Building the Implosion Gadget: March 1945 to July 1945
- 17 Critical Assemblies and Nuclear Physics: August 1944 to July 1945
- 18 The Test at Trinity: January 1944 to July 1945
- 19 Delivery: June 1943 to August 1945
- Epilogue
- 20 The Legacy of Los Alamos
- Notes
- Name Index
- Subject Index
14 - Exploring the Plutonium Implosion Weapon: August 1944 to February 1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Early Research on Fission: 1933–1943
- 3 The Early Materials Program: 1933–1943
- 4 Setting Up Project Y: June 1942 to March 1943
- 5 Research in the First Months of Project Y: April to September 1943
- 6 Creating a Wartime Community: September 1943 to August 1944
- 7 The Gun Weapon: September 1943 to August 1944
- 8 The Implosion Program Accelerates: September 1943 to July 1944
- 9 New Hopes for the Implosion Weapon: September 1943 to July 1944
- 10 The Nuclear Properties of a Fission Weapon: September 1943 to July 1944
- 11 Uranium and Plutonium: Early 1943 to August 1944
- 12 The Discovery of Spontaneous Fission in Plutonium and the Reorganization of Los Alamos
- 13 Building the Uranium Bomb: August 1944 to July 1945
- 14 Exploring the Plutonium Implosion Weapon: August 1944 to February 1945
- 15 Finding the Implosion Design: August 1944 to February 1945
- 16 Building the Implosion Gadget: March 1945 to July 1945
- 17 Critical Assemblies and Nuclear Physics: August 1944 to July 1945
- 18 The Test at Trinity: January 1944 to July 1945
- 19 Delivery: June 1943 to August 1945
- Epilogue
- 20 The Legacy of Los Alamos
- Notes
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
After August 1944, the implosion program began to engulf a growing fraction of the laboratory's personnel. Considerable research during the fall and following winter focused on experimental diagnostics. Seven parallel experimental programs – RaLa, betatron, magnetic, and electric pin studies, in addition to the original X-ray, photographic, and terminal observations – brought the most current techniques of experimental physics to bear on implosion problems. The foremost tasks were to determine the collapse time, compression, and symmetry, and to assess different explosives and explosive system designs. Informed trial and error was the approach most frequently taken in these simultaneous lines of experimental inquiry, since theoretical understanding was still incomplete. While each program offered its particular advantages, many efforts overlapped, adding modest confirmation to the amassing body of understanding. Despite lingering uncertainties about the feasibility of an implosion weapon, the six months following the August 1944 reorganization saw the central research question of the laboratory shift from “Can the implosion be built?” to “How can the implosion weapon be made?”
Much work also remained before plutonium components could be produced. In establishing a plutonium production system in the limited time available, the chemists and metallurgists, like the physicists, often relied on empirical methods guided by intuition, since little theory was available and methodical procedures were extremely time-consuming.
Experimental Diagnostics
The history of the seven-pronged experimental program to study implosion during World War II is one of painstaking progress, with few highlights or definitive measurements, many ambiguous steps, and numerous failures.
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- Critical AssemblyA Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945, pp. 267 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993