How Fermi Built the World’s First Nuclear Reactor in a Squash Court in 1942 When America Had None скачать в хорошем качестве

How Fermi Built the World’s First Nuclear Reactor in a Squash Court in 1942 When America Had None

How Fermi Built the World’s First Nuclear Reactor in a Squash Court in 1942 When America Had None December 2nd, 1942. 3:25 in the afternoon. Beneath the west stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, in a makeshift laboratory that once echoed with the bounce of rubber balls and the shouts of college athletes, forty-nine men stood in absolute silence. The air was thick with graphite dust that coated their lungs and blackened their fingernails. A single overhead bulb cast long shadows across a structure that rose twenty feet high—a precise geometric lattice of black graphite blocks and uranium spheres, layer upon layer, 57,000 pounds of metal and mineral assembled with the kind of precision usually reserved for cathedral spires or bomb sights.