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Workshop W2
"A Natural – Nuclear Physics,
Nuclear War.
Raymond G. Wilson Friday, Oct. 12, 2007, 10:00-12:00 For 27 years Illinois Wesleyan University has been providing its students with a course about which some students have remarked, "This should be required of everyone!" They are speaking of our general education course in the physical sciences the theme of which is: an exploration of the first use of nuclear weapons in war, nuclear physics and technology, and avoidance of a repeat use of nuclear weapons. Is a course like this missing from your curriculum? The topic is sufficiently important. Nuclear problems led to the creation in 1945 of a new "journal," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, endorsed by many Nobel Laureates including Albert Einstein, and also Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard. These nuclear problems remain largely unsolved; some have become more complex. Is your physics department helping to teach the next generations of politicians and decision-makers, citizens, to fully understand the nature of nuclear war and the importance of a solution to this problem? If you do not, who will? This workshop will illustrate how one may create a lively, thought provoking, important course, greatly appreciated by students. Would you be prepared for large enrollments? Do you remember what Oppenheimer said about how to avoid wars? Should you join the helpful one-week workshop at Illinois Wesleyan? Do you know someone who should? We will describe the results of an experiment which asks, "How hot was it at the Hiroshima hypocenter?" Were people really "vaporized?" We will introduce an essay, "Peace: A New Way of Thinking about Achieving and Preserving It."
• What goes on immediately upon ignition, with million-degree temperatures and the surrounding air made "opaque" from ionization? • What does it really mean when it is said that the temperature at the Hiroshima hypocenter was thousands of degrees? What kind of thermometer measures that? In less than 3 seconds? • About 700 meters away, did the heat melt the lead of the leaded-glass windows of Nagarekawa Church? • From the bomb's neutron flux what kind of radioactivity was induced in the environment, in dirt, aluminum, glass, bones, etc.? Does any remain today?
BUT, As interesting as these problems might be to a scientist, one quickly realizes, I hope, that the overwhelming problem is far more important than any others; "How do you prevent this from ever happening again?" Students will want to pursue that problem also. What does the future hold for them? The 15 kiloton Hiroshima Uranium-235 gun-type bomb of 1945 was the only one of its kind ever detonated. In 1959, when I began these studies, I did not realize that world nuclear arsenals were quickly approaching their maximum total yield of about 23,000 Megatons, achieved in the early 1960s. |
There
is a lot of good undergraduate science here; and fascinating
problems:
• Can one correctly simulate 100
calories/cm2 to human skin, as at the Hiroshima
hypocenter, using, say, pigskin in a broiler? It was 229 calories/cm2
at the Nagasaki hypocenter. For comparison, the solar exposure in
Hiroshima at midday in August over a three second period is normally
about 0.06 calories/cm2. (7 calories/cm2 will
yield 3rd degree burns.)