A McDonald’s in Kuwait (© Owen Franken).
Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his Web site.
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Tracing the Manhattan Project—Day Five
The Trinity test site of the Fat Man plutonium bomb is tucked well inside the 2.2 million desert acres of the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. We walked the dusty site—still speckled with Trinitite, sand fused by the detonation into green glass—during the last day of the MIT Alumni Travel Program tour, Entering the Atomic Age: The Manhattan Project. We had prepared for that moment with lectures on science and technology and stories by participants who made the history come alive. Now it was time to walk the very first place on Earth where a nuclear weapon was detonated. We were a pretty silent and thoughtful bunch, as the wind swept over the desert plain.
MIT travelers visit the site of the Trinity test, the world's first nuclear weapons explosion; the lava obelisk marks ground zero. Photos: Nancy DuVergne Smith
The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, was fueled with uranium-235, which was extremely difficult to extract but was sure to work with a gun-type mechanism. That bomb was assembled in flight because they didn’t want an armed nuclear bomb going up in a B-29, which was prone to burst into flames on take off. But once up in the air, they were confident it would work—and it did. U-235 was so difficult to extract, however, there would be only one bomb for quite a while. So the Los Alamos team came up with a different solution, a bomb using plutonium-239, which was easier to derive but detonating it was tricky. The solution required a circle of high explosive charges that fired inward simultaneously to cause an implosion. The plutonium bomb was successfully tested July 16, 1945, and President Truman shared the results with Allied leaders at the Potsdam Conference. The world learned of atomic bombs when Little Boy was used Aug. 6.
Conversations continue during lunch at a Santa Fe house where Manhattan Project physicists gathered to relax--and have weddings.
Great stories, terrific conversations. The five-day trip was filled with personal stories from people who had worked and lived in Los Alamos during the tumultuous heart of the Manhattan Project in 1943–45. Guide Ellen Bradbury, who grew up in Los Alamos, described visiting the weaponeer who helped launch Fat Man. The flight from Tinian Island to Japan bypassed the first target city and flew on to Nagasaki because of cloud cover. The crew nearly had to ditch the plane because they were short of gas—radio silence prevented coordination with accompanying planes, which were obscured by clouds, so the pilot circled for an hour at a rendezvous point. One traveler, a retired Boeing executive, described the company’s first test flight of the B-29, which ended in a crash and loss of all on board. The engine was redesigned but remained an unpredictable element in bomb delivery. A scholar described the women involved in the science and development project including Lise Meitner, a co-discoverer of fission who was overlooked when the Nobel Prize went to her male partner.
Great conversations continued the learning. Topics ranged from nuclear technologies to the personal challenges of leaders like Robert Oppenheimer to lingering questions on how the nuclear bombs were first used. Many travelers had studied the era for years, but each of us gained new insights from walking the sites and hearing the voices of those who lived the Manhattan Project.
Nancy DuVergne Smith
Learn about MIT’s connections to the Manhattan Project in the first trip post and the group’s visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Read about new work in MIT’s Nuclear Science and Engineering department including the 2009 update on the Future of Nuclear Power.
PS: Learn about other MIT Alumni Travel Program trips.
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Guest bloggers: Bob Ferrara ’67 and Indran Ratnathicam ’98
With the MIT team behind them, players and others from host Kainan University display their welcome banner in the opening day’s ceremony. Note the size of the MIT players. That’s man-mountain 7’0” Assistant Coach Paul Grant in the center rear. All photos this post: Dawn Anderson.
The MIT team is off to terrific start in the first three days of competition here in Taiwan, at the 5th Annual Kainan University Invitational. Our combination of talent, size, and team depth has made the difference in three straight big wins and earned the team a place in tomorrow’s championship game.
This is a squad that knows how to win, having just set the record for the best regular season record (22-3) in our basketball program’s 110-year history. They are big; three starters are 6’8” or better. And the entire team runs the court like race horses, with 6’9” sophomore center Noel Hollingsworth often leading the pack down court. Coach Larry Anderson has been substituting players freely in this fast-paced international game with its 24-second shot clock. Our scrappy but smaller Asian university opponents have battled well, but so far they simply cannot match up to MIT’s combination size and speed. On successive days, MIT has defeated teams from Hsuan Chang University, Kyushu University in Japan, and the host Kainan University.
Most of all, though, these MIT kids came to play. They were ready from the opening tipoff on Monday and literally exploded out of gate in what must be the highest scoring quarter of basketball in MIT history. They have not let up much since. The final test comes tomorrow against the winner of the other bracket, TPEC or Taipei Physical Education College, a school whose mission is “to carry through the government’s policy to cultivate elite athletes, artistic dancers, physical educators, athletic trainers, and sports professionals.” This focus on physical education instruction is reminiscent of our very tough NEWMAC conference opponent Springfield College, the birthplace of basketball.
The MIT team on the bench in the right foreground, just before the start of the Kyushu game. The stands are packed for all games, and hundreds more young fans occupy every available courtside location.
Our guys will be ready and fired up to play again tomorrow. All of us alumni should take some pride in the development of this MIT basketball program, which has produced this year’s solid team. In one way or another, we all helped to shape it and own a share in it
This evening the team was invited to a nice dinner in downtown Taipei by the MIT Club of Taiwan. Club President Albert Ting MBA ’99 was a fabulous host and we expect to return the favor when he heads to MIT for one of his frequent Cambridge visits. As much as alumni support like Albert’s is valued, parental support can be every bit as special. For example, during our late night layover in San Francisco International Airport on the way to Taiwan, Emily Tashman, the mother of one of our players, generously brought delicious sandwiches for the entire team. She obviously knows how keep young people healthy and growing, as evidenced by her son Will—a big, strong 6’8” power forward.
Will’s game is developing well, often under the watchful eye Associate Head Coach Kevin Byrne. Kevin is a pretty good power forward himself, having played professionally for three years in England and Ireland. He knows our Division III game, both as player and coach at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh and also as a coach at Marietta College in Ohio. Kevin has been with Coach Anderson here at MIT for two years and is now another integral part in building up this program. He has a love for all things basketball, from scouting, strategy, and game preparation to working with the players. He was especially pleased with Will Tashman’s development as a freshman this past year, seeing him contribute first as a big time rebounder and lately as in-close scorer.
By the way, you can hear firsthand from Will and fellow sophomore-to-be and cocaptain Mitchell Kates ’13 on the new unofficial MIT Men’s Basketball blog. Both Will and Mitch, the starting point guard, are sharing some of their impressions here. And stay tuned to Slice of MIT for details from the championship game.
Cheers,
Bob and Indran
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Guest bloggers: Bob Ferrara ’67 and Indran Ratnathicam ’98
Hello Friends of MIT Men’s Basketball,
Our Men’s Basketball Team has arrived once again in Taiwan, ready to play in the fifth annual Kainan University Invitational. You may recall that our guys won the very first tournament back in 2006, defeating an excellent Yo Ming team from the SBL (Super Basketball League) in this basketball-crazy country. This year the competition includes university teams from Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and four from Taiwan. Many of the teams are staying in the same hotel here, where anticipation has been steadily building.
Men's basketball team in action against a team from Kyushu, Japan. MIT's superior shooting and rebounding helped them prevail against the quick, intense Japanese team. All photos this post: Dawn Anderson.
This morning all of us gathered for a tour of host Kainan University. We were also treated to local history and even a puppet show. The school’s roots go back to 1917 during the Japanese colonial period, when a technical high school was founded by the colonial administrators. When the Japanese left, they gave the school to its alumni. The alumni fulfilled a lifelong dream with the creation of the university in 2000. Today Kainan serves 8,000 students, primarily in technical and business areas.
The Taiwanese are simply wonderful hosts, and the hospitality is always superb. They are in awe of one of our assistant coaches, former NBA player Paul Grant, a big and mobile seven-footer. As those of you who have been to an MIT game recently know, Paul is quite a presence on our bench as well. Three years ago, he offered to help Coach Larry Anderson and has since become a great asset as assistant coach focusing on player development. His work in real estate development affords him the flexibility to join the staff and work closely with the team. Most recently, he and his older brother developed Worcester Square, bringing back its century-old luster in Boston’s resurgent South End. Like all our coaches, he brings to our young players lots of practical knowledge and a true love of the game. To this, he adds his own NBA experience. Nice combination!
Teams were treated to an interactive puppet show.
Our Kainan hosts generously covered the lion’s share of the expenses, which allowed a few other MIT representatives to come along at an incremental cost. Coach Anderson’s wife, Dawn, is becoming quite the photographer and brought along all her new equipment. She loves to capture special moments on and off the court. Many more photos will be posted on a gallery when we return.
This Wednesday evening, we will experience more special local hospitality from the MIT Club of Taiwan, who have invited the team to a dinner in downtown Taipei. There are over 500 alums living in Taiwan, so this is quite a thriving club. Soon they will also be welcoming MIT President Susan Hockfield on her upcoming Asia trip.
We wish all of you were here to enjoy this culture and the basketball. Look for another update in a few days and check out MIT Hoops, the MIT basketball blog that some of the players will be contributing to during their trip. Already you can read posts about playing the initial games and encountering cultural differences. In the meantime, please keep rooting for our young, talented players during this very special chapter of their lives.
Cheers,
Bob and Indran
Bob Ferrara ’67 is the senior director for strategic planning, communications, and alumni relations for the MIT Division of Student Life and a basketball reunion committee member. Indran Ratnathicam ’98 is the assistant men’s basketball coach and a basketball reunion committee member.
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Is there a way to visualize people’s innermost thoughts? Data visualization experts Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg say yes (tentatively).
The founders of Flowing Media, a studio focusing on media and consumer-oriented visualization, developed a project that lets users pit parts of commonly googled phrases against one another. For example, one could pit the words “are engineers” against the words “are writers” and compare how those phrases are most frequently completed.
The project, called Web Seer, relies on Google Suggest for data. Google Suggest lets you see what others are asking when they search the web.
Wattenberg presented the project, along with about a dozen others, at last week’s Visual Interpretations Conference, held at MIT. The conference was organized by the MIT HyperStudio for Digital Humanities with the MIT Communications Forum and the Comparative Media Studies Program.
Below are some other interesting Web Seer searches. Intrigued? Try it yourself.
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Winding over the Jemez Mountains from Albuquerque toward Santa Fe, the 25 MIT alumni and guests who began tracing the evolution of the Manhattan Project on Thursday first dipped into earth sciences. Guided by a geologist, we stopped to see the Valles Caldera, the basin of a supervolcano that left a 10-mile-wide crater 1.2 million years old. The ancient violent eruptions that left more than 800 feet of pyroclastic flows were a telling kickoff for the MIT Alumni Travel Program tour that is exploring another violent eruption, the development and use of nuclear weapons at the end of WWII.
Prof. Gino Segre PhD '63 presents Physics 101
Soon we arrived at the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe, chosen because it was a favorite gathering place of Robert Oppenheimer, the science director of the Manhattan Project, and his colleagues in the 20-month sprint to develop a nuclear weapon that would speed the end of WWII. The first evening included a festive dinner and a first talk by UPenn Physics Professor Gino Segre PhD ‘63 who explained how so many eminent European physicists wound up on the 7,000 ft mesa of Los Alamos. Story: Ellen Bradbury, our guide, told us that if a scientist got too drunk, a La Fonda bartender checked the guy into a room and took away his pants, so he couldn’t wander around, perhaps spilling secrets.
Next morning, the visit to the Los Alamos National Laboratory included a behind-the-fence tour of V-site only occasionally available to the public. We saw the simple wooden buildings, snuggled into berms (to reduce radiation in case of accident) that housed the technical development of uranium and plutonium bombs. Ellen, who grew up in Los Alamos where her father was a scientist and her father-in-law to be was director after Oppenheimer, got our group access to exclusive experiences including talks by Manhattan Project scientists and experts. The V-Site is and the Trinity test bomb site we will see on today, May 24, are only available to the public a few days of the year.
A replica of Fat Man, the first plutonium bomb.
On this trip, Entering the Atomic Age: The Manhattan Project, May 20-25, we are seeing history come alive in the places and artifacts of the story, learning about the science, and hearing first-person stories from people who worked and lived in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Outside the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, we saw aircraft designed to deliver nuclear weapons including a B-29, the type craft that dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. We could practically thump the sides of replicas of that bomb, Little Boy, and Fat Man, the second bomb, at the Bradbury museum in Santa Fe.
The 1963 NBC White Paper, The Decision to Drop the Bomb, was never shown on TV because it was deemed inappropriate fare for a nation in mourning after the Kennedy asassination. In fact, it has never been show on TV, but we were able to see a rare copy. Though it and other sources, we came to a fresh understanding of the dreadful losses in the war, the political intrigues of the time, and the realization among the scientists and others of how monumental the new technology was. The decision to use these untried nuclear weapons was made in the waning days of the war, after Germany had surrendered and the death toll was already in the tens of millions. Europe was in ruins and Japan was being firebombed daily. Yet the Japanese military’s fierce resistance to surrender would have made an invasion costly—perhaps one million American lives and as many Japanese lives. America was looking for a way to give the Japanese emperor the incentive to overrule his military and make peace. The first bomb, a uranium gadget, was dropped Aug. 6 and still the Japanese refused to surrender. The second bomb, a plutonium bomb, was dropped Aug. 9 and the Japanese quickly surrendered. Although more than 100,000 Japanese died in the bombings, many believe that it stopped the war that had already taken 39 million lives.
Guide Ellen Bradbury describes how physicists were secretly delivered to Los Alamos.
Beyond the serious topics and the amazing technological effort involved, the troupe of alumni, guests, and friends are also sharing personal experiences throughout the educational journey. At a reception Friday for the travelers and local New Mexico alumni, Gino told the story of his awe of Manhattan Project leader Victor Weisskopf, an eminent physicist who became his professor at MIT. Later, they were both at CERN. Still later, Weisskopft became Gino’s brother-in-law. Suddenly a man whom Gino had considered a physics god, was sitting over the family table—and, boy, were the first conversations awkward. Then Gino invited the audience to share some of their experiences with their MIT faculty. Nearly a dozen voices—both travelers and local alumni—added stories. And the years that separated the alumni from their own student days suddenly disappeared.
Tomorrow: we are off to visit the Trinity site where the Fat Man bomb was tested.
Nancy DuVergne Smith
Read about the trip’s MIT connections in the first Slice of MIT post about the trip—and the final day visiting the Trinity test site.
Read about new work in MIT’s Nuclear Science and Engineering department including the 2009 update on the Future of Nuclear Power.
PS: Learn about upcoming MIT Alumni Travel Program trips.
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Boy pulling water buffalo in Northern Laos (© Owen Franken).
Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his Web site.
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The Polaroid Model 95A, one of the earliest Picture-in-a-Minute cameras pioneered by Edwin Land and Polaroid. Photo: Michael Cardinali/Courtesy MIT Museum.
Remember the olden days, when a Polaroid was an exciting taste of “instant” photographic gratification? When people plucking a fresh picture from the camera tended to fall into either the flap-the-photo-silly camp or the don’t-disturb-the-magic camp? Soon, you’ll be able to revisit those memories. The MIT Museum recently received a collection of more than 9,000 Polaroid artifacts from PLR IP Holdings, LLC, including every make and model of commercially produced Polaroid camera and numerous experimental models and prototypes that never made it to the marketplace.
The acquisition, cataloging 73 years of Polaroid history, is one of the world’s largest R&D collections and contains fascinating inventions from the 20th century. There are rare Polarized glasses dating from the 1939 World’s Fair (to show visitors the company’s Vectograph system, the precursor to 3-D motion pictures), a historic bellows camera the size of a filing cabinet, SX-70 cameras that defined the instant photography era, early movie projectors, some of the first automobile headlights that incorporated polarizing materials, original newsprint sketches by Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land, and much more.
A team of seven experienced archivists and museum professionals who joined MIT collections staff to inventory, photograph, and pack the more than 9,000 artifacts in the Polaroid Company Collection recently donated to the MIT Museum. Photo: Michael Cardinali/Courtesy MIT Museum.
Land, a Cambridge-based scientist and inventor, held more than 500 patents, the second highest number ever after Thomas Edison. He also had strong ties to MIT. He was given the distinction of being named a Visiting Institute Professor and is considered the inspiration behind MIT’s widely emulated Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).
Land also employed MIT faculty and alumni. “We very much hope to involve Polaroid “alumni” in the cataloging and documentation of these rare artifacts and to get as much information online as soon as possible,” said Deborah Douglas, curator of science and technology for the MIT Museum. In June, the museum plans to display a few artifacts from the new acquisition. Plans for a major exhibition are under discussion.
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The Manhattan Project is a Rorschach test of sorts. Was it a Herculean intellectual effort to develop the science and technology of the atom bomb to end WWII with less loss of life? Did it create weapons of such magnitude that they have tilted international politics ever since? Are nuclear technologies—fission and fusion—key to a carbon-free energy future? Or are these debates still going on?
An MIT Alumni Travel Program trip to Manhattan Project sites in New Mexico—starting today—is tracing that complex lineage and probing some of the big questions. UPenn Professor of Physics Gino Segre PhD ’63 will lecture. I’m going along as an MIT host on the five-day trip and I’ll be posting updates May 24 and 28 on Slice of MIT. Join us virtually!
Entry to Los Alamos in the '40s.
Here’s a bit of the MIT connection:
Vannevar Bush EGD ’16, an MIT faculty member, public intellectual, and founder of the company that became Raytheon, was a central figure in the Manhattan Project. In essence, he was the one who briefed Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and led the organization that managed the Manhattan Project. His influential essay about the aftermath and emerging technologies appeared in the 1945 Atlantic Monthly article, “As We May Think.” His vision of combining government, academia, and industry resources to accomplish great things made the Manhattan Project successful—and also influenced America’s post-war economic surge.
Questions raged decades later. Nine MIT faculty members who worked on the Manhattan Project shared their views in the 1985 Compton lecture titled 40 Years After: MIT, Los Alamos, and the Bomb. Institute Professor Victor K. Weisskopf opened the talk: “The scientists at Los Alamos believed that such powerful weapons would make war impossible. We were naïve. We meant well. But at this moment in history, I do believe we are on a collision course.” Read the April 29, 1985, article in The Tech.
Alumni are visiting a transformed Los Alamos site.
Today the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) has been called a contemporary Manhattan Project by news media because so much faculty brainpower is concentrating on an issue of global importance. Check out an MITEI white paper on the Future of Nuclear Power and a panel on options for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. And in January, MITEI Director Ernie Moniz was named to the Department of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.
MIT Physics Professor Emeritus Aron Bernstein lectured on the science and history of nuclear weapons during IAP 2009. He notes that many Manhattan Project scientists felt the atomic bomb should be used as a demonstration only and he described nuclear disarmament activities at MIT.
Just this month, Italy and Russia announced they will build the Ignitor, an MIT-designed fusion reactor expected to be the first to achieve ignition (when fusion becomes self-sustaining), a big step toward harnessing the nearly limitless, clean power of fusion.
Check the itinerary, Prof. Segre’s recent books, and other trip info about Entering the Atomic Age: The Manhattan Project. And join us for Slice updates about the MIT trip on Monday and Thursday.
Nancy DuVergne Smith, MIT Alumni Association Editorial Director
Update: Read the next post from the road Entering the Atomic Age and the visit to the Trinity site where the world’s first plutonium bomb was tested.
Read about new work in MIT’s Nuclear Science and Engineering department including the 2009 update on the Future of Nuclear Power.
PS: Learn about upcoming trips with the MIT Alumni Travel Program.
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You may recall several weeks ago when Slice announced the first ever MIT Alumni Association PEEPS Contest. The decision was tough, but the Slice staff has chosen a winner.
[Drum roll, please.]
Congratulations to K’Andrea Bickerstaff ’89, a talented PEEPS artist and technical analyst from Austin, Texas. K’Andrea’s entry, “8878 PEEPS + 1 Ear” has earned her one sparkling, hand-blown glass PEEPS® Chick with Swarovski crystal eyes! The glass PEEPS® Chick will be packed in a Just Born Gift Box with PEEPS® and other Just Born candy brands.
1st Place: 8878 PEEPS +1 Ear, by K’Andrea Bickerstaff ’89 (Click the image to see a larger version.)
Congratulations are also in order for Miriam (Shames) Bakal ’91, Melissa (Chang) Lee, ’91 Sandra Ma ’91, and Christina Liu ’91 for their second place entry, “Drinking From a Firehose.” In addition to (what will most likely be) endless, unrivaled respect from their friends and colleagues, they will receive a PEEPS® Tote Bag and baseball cap also packed in the Just Born Gift Box with PEEPS® and other Just Born candy brands.
2nd Place: Drinking From a Firehose, by class of ’91 alumnae Miriam (Shames) Bakal, Melissa (Chang) Lee, Sandra Ma, and Christina Liu (Click the image to see a larger version.)
Sincere thanks to everyone who participated. The submissions were creative, expertly executed, and ridiculously fun to review.
Have an idea for a contest? Email us.
peep!
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