I went to New Mexico and all I got was a Lousy Piece of Trinitite
*** FOR LEGAL REASONS THE TITLE IS A JOKE ALL PIECES OF TRINITITE WERE LEFT AT TRINTY SITE, NEW MEXICO.***
What’s up, guys? Welcome back to another Humanities blog post. Today, I’ll be reflecting on our learning in The Manhattan Project. The driving question for the project was: “How did the development of the atomic bomb change the world?” This will be answered at the end. Guess what, some of us PLP 11’s also went on a field study to NEW MEXICO, BABY, YEAH! We visited 4 cities, 5 museums about nuclear history and science, and a bunch of other fun stuff. Should probably mention the final product, which was a collaborative E-Book published on the Apple Books store. We worked in groups of 6; my group members were Hannah, Sean, Colton, Makenna, and Faith.
Now let me take you back to the first assignment in this project.
One of the main ideas of this project was historical significance, which you can tell from the Driving Question alone as it’s asking how did the atomic bomb change the world. So our first assignment was to take any historical event and say why it’s historically significant and on what scale—local, national, global. The topic I chose was the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. My argument is that the Emancipation Proclamation gave the North a noble cause to fight for during the American Civil War, preventing. My other point is that the Proclamation laid the groundwork for social change long after the war.
Initially, I struggled with this task and received a revision. As I completely missed the point about historical significance. To correct this, I narrowed my topic to the Emancipation Proclamation, as initially I had it on the abolishment of slavery, which is a massive topic. After this revision, I received a proficient mark.
Next, we went to New Mexico over the course of 10 days. Sean and I, who was the other group member on the trip, each group had two people go. During the trip at every museum we went to, we were able to interview a person(s). We also collected photos and tons of hands-on learning experience. Click the link below ⬇️ to view a highlight reel courtesy of the PLP Instagram.
Overall, super fun trip, and I think the learning Sean and I did really upped the quality of our book. As we put some information that isn’t widely known into our book example before the Trinity Test, pillows and blankets from the nearby towns were bought and placed at the base of the tower.
Probably the coolest thing we did was go to White Sands National Park, which is a white sand desert near the White Sands Missile Range. It was really cool because we learned all about the history of the place, how it used to be underwater and all. The sand was super soft, allowing us to jump off the dunes and land below. The sand is white because it’s made of gypsum. We also got probably the best sunset photos to ever exist.
The biggest learning experience is when we went to the Trinity Site, which had been hyped up a lot because it’s only open twice a year. And when you go there, you drive there in an escorted caravan because the path to get there is classified government site. This is a massive event that people from all over the world come to see. Don’t believe me? Then let’s ask one of the caravan organizers, Mercedes Ramos:
When we got back from New Mexico, we began constructing our book. I wrote Chapter Two of it, which was all about the science behind the bomb. In my chapter, I wrote about the several major scientific discoveries that happened at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. I wrote all the way up to just before the Trinity Test.
For me, the most challenging part about this was the writing, as we made our style like Oppenheimer’s Notebook, so everything was written from his perspective, which was a new thing for me as I had never written in the first person before. The most difficult part was I had to be careful with what I wrote because everything I said had to either be a scientific fact or something he said, which was tricky because he’s dead. In the first draft of my chapter, I had “I Robert Oppenheimer,” which I thought sounded cool but after some teacher feedback, I was told not. The two best things about my chapter are the little doodles and cross-outs that make it feel more like a notebook, and the second would be the scientific discoveries formatted into the first person.
The most annoying part of making the book was the citations we had to add afterward. I added all of our sources as a bibliography at the end, but we still had to go through, and every claim we made had to have a source behind it in MLA format. We had about 1 and a half weeks to work on the book after we came back from New Mexico, which is when I completed most of this stuff.
Our next activity was a self-reflection on what our contributions to the group were, what our group members contributed using a pie chart with percents and a next steps bit. At first, I wasn’t sure what to give each of my group members and was obsessing over whether or not I made the right choice. But after a couple of hours of not doing it, I came back to it and made my decisions. I’m not going to show the pie chart because that’s confidential. And everything I said about the book process is in here already. Going forward I will not obsess over the numbers as much and just go with my gut.
The next activity was to read a speech given by Oppenheimer in 1945 to the Los Alamos scientists after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We had one class period to analyze this paragraph and then answer the question “Do you think he regrets his contributions to the bomb.” Sounds simple in theory but made all the more difficult due to the fact that it was like a test meaning we couldn’t talk to each other. This made it significantly harder as PLP is often built around collaborative work and peer feedback, so not being able to talk to anyone made it more difficult. Another challenging aspect is that it’s a speech from 1945 written by a very smart man which means some of the phrasing and such is more confusing to read. I was told that it’s a grade 9 level read, which if that’s true then I need to read more challenging books. Currently, I am revising it to a proficient standard but you can read it here:
On the next day, we in groups of our choice (yay) had to read a piece called ‘Road to Berlin’ and then answer the questions. Working in a group made this much easier as we read as a group and then split the questions into smaller groups of 3; there were nine of us total. I answered question 1b with Ben and Noah the question asked: “Is there a single sentence that performs the function of the thesis statement?” Our answer was Yes, the sentence we chose was: “The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it.” For reference, the story is of a soldier walking along the Normandy Coast shortly after the D-Day Landings. Our support behind the sentence we chose was: “This sentence conveys the message of the thesis statement due to the grammar & language used. Words like “waste, awful, and destruction” properly convey the impact of the war’s aftermath. By comparing the waste and destruction to the loss of human life correctly allows us to grasp the scale of said destruction.” I think this proves our point quite well. You can view the whole thing below ⬇️.
Now, the highly anticipated moment, the ANSWER TO THE DRIVING QUESTION. LET’S GO! AHHHHHHHH. The question, which was about 1,356 words ago, is: “How did the development of the atomic bomb change the world?” The Atomic Bomb changed the world in some massive ways. How countries conduct warfare and politics, by developing the atomic bombs, significant advancements were made in nuclear science. Warfare and political changed after the bombings as soon after another country, the USSR, had the bomb and the US entered a Cold War stalemate, neither side willing to end humanity. To show historical significance, you can look at modern-day Russia or even North Korea and how they threaten to nuke everything. But for now, it remains an empty threat as the destruction of our species and planet is just not worth it because we’ve seen what weapons like this can do. To date, there have been no major world wars since because conflict on that scale would end the world. Secondly, with the massive sense of urgency, the US nuclear program received major funding it would not have had otherwise, leading to major breakthroughs in only a couple of years. This led to things we have now such as chemotherapy, nuclear power plants, Geiger counters, etc. These two things prove that the development of the Atomic Bomb changed the world!
Okay, thanks for reading this blog. Bit of a chunky one, but it was a massive project that I enjoyed. And if you’re ever feeling unlucky, just remember that most people who lived at Los Alamos didn’t own a bathtub.
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