Radiation and the atomic bomb💥

Hi and welcome back to another blog post, 

This wraps up our second humanities project for the semester, and our big field study for this year. 

There’s a lot to unpack here so lets get right into it. 

The Beginning 

This humanities project was almost an extension of our previous project “the Atomic journal” but not in every way. This projects main focus (rather then it be the Manhattan project) was all about fear. 

Our drive in question was “How has fear been used as a political, defensive and cultural tool?” 

But within that question we made our won. We had the opportunity to found a topic we found interesting and really narrow down on that, I choose to look into the after effects of the bomb, specifically the effects radiation had of the people of Hiroshima. My ‘inquiry question’ (as we called it) was “How has society been shaped by the fear of radiation” and later we had to turn that question into a claim and my claim was “The fear of radiation has and had a significant influence on shaping societal norms and behaviours”

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We began this project by simply reviewing our past knowledge and making sure we completely understand the story and history behind the first atomic bomb. 

For this project we got the opportunity to read two separate novels, Hiroshima by John Hersey and Fallout by Todd Strasser. Both gave us an insight into two different perspective of the effects of the bomb. Hiroshima is a non-fiction story, following 6 survivors after the atomic bomb detonation and how they deal with all the loss and distraction, while fallout is a fiction story and focuses on a few family stuck in a fallout shelter and how they deal with issues and problems along the way. 

Both stories  brought up lot of interesting different ideas and perspectives. 

While both books were quite insightful and brought to life different perspectives I think its more relevant to only displays my Hiroshima notes 

During the time we were reading the books, we listen to a few lectures and discover the Netflix series “The Bomb and The Cold War”. we analyzed the first four episodes to get some more insight into the political aspect son the Cold War in particular, but we took notes of; the styles, recurring themes and of course all the information. 

Notes on:

• episode 1
• episode 2
• episode 3
• episode 4

While all these notes were very important, the main takeaway from this whole project was the way we collected and stored our notes. For this project, our teachers introduced us the system called “ZettleKasten”.

 What’s a ZettleKasten you might ask? Well its a way of organizing you thinking, “making your notes do the thinking for you”. It start with fleeting notes;  those are normally short and sweet bullet points, quotes from the text and commonly not your own words and opinions. Once your fleeting notes are complete you begin to make literature or evergreen notes, these have lot of substance to them and show the true comprehension. In your “lit notes” you term your most valuable points into your own words, keeping in mind they’re still relatively short, this is where you tern things like quotes into your own words as-well (try not to just copy and paste). And once your done with all that you can make permeant notes!!! This is the good stuff. Permanent notes are hefty compared to literature or fleeting notes. While making a permeant note you want to write it as if you’re going to show it to someone else, they should still be in your own words and be in full sentences, but in a permeant notes you can make connection to things you’ve heard/learnt in the past, make references and disclosure your sources. And your final step is to delete your fleeting notes, because technically if you did it all properly, all the important information (worth remembering) that you wrote down in your fleeting notes should be presented through your lit and permeant notes. 

To reflect on this is new system, it was hard. Me and Mrs.Willemse had a lovely one on one conversation just trying to simply to concept for me. In the end I think I was just over complicating it. I see the ZettleKasten system as a guideline, there three types fo notes you should be taking and how you organize them should be up to you. Some people choose to make three different folders/tabs, but I do it all on one bag and make three chapter within. The ZettleKasten system is extremely helpful and I will try and integrate it into my learning in the future. 

Now for the exciting part!… the trip!!!!

You know me and my love for book creators, so here’s a book creator. Inside you will find, the weather forecast for the days we were there, where we went in the first place, countless hotel tours, and of course a day by day playback. 

I am writing this blog post a week and a half after we returned home from Arizona/Nevada and I still think about all the amazing experiences/hikes/food we had on this trip. It truly was an amazing trip. (If you didn’t read by book creator) we flew into Tucson on April 18th and flew out of Las Vegas airport on April 28th. In those 10 days we were up to lots! Most notably; The Titian missile silo, Pima Air and Space Museum, Biosphere 2, The Hoover Dam, the National Atomic Testing Museum, The sphere and a undercover mansion in Las Vegas. 

My favourite place we visited (not necessarily “atomic bomb” related) was the sphere! It was crazy! We did the sphere experience, so before we went into the actually stadium, we had the opportunity to interact with the AI Robots. (Keep in mind I don’t mess around with animators or anything.) I took this opportunity to talk to them! It was creepy because they make really intense eye contact with you, but minus that they’re crazy smart! They’d call you out by what you were wearing (eg. You in the blue shirt, green hat and purple pants) and ask for your name and they’re comprehend it! It was truly a surreal experience, and to think that they’re all made made was absolute mind blowing. And don’t even get name stared on the actual show inside the sphere. My jaw was literally on the floor. Amazing sound, amazing quality and beautiful film (postcard from earth)

if you look up “the postcard of earth sphere” in YouTube, this guys filmed the whole thing if you want to seen it through an iPhone camera lens on ur float screen laptop/iPad whenever.

below is  Faith interview one of the robots, I asked Ai “how do you think we could re-decide cars to make them more environmentally friendly” but I couldn’t Find anyone who filmed it

 

My favourite “educational” place was the Mohave Museum, probably because I got majority of my project evidence from that experience, but also because it was quite underground. Our tour guide was lovely. She was so eager to learn about our project and what each of us were ‘investigating”.

^inside the Mohave Museum

She talked to me about the downwinders in Mohave country, and gave me a book! Still haven’t had time to read it tho (also Mr.Hughes has it anyway) I also got some evidence of ‘community coming together after a nuclear accident. Check out Kingman history requiring “the kingman explosion”

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Our final product for this project could be “whatever we wanted”. It a certain existent. As you read above, our main drive in question was “how has fear been used as a political, defensive and cultural tool?” And with that we were all told to think of a inquiry question. In the end we would show our answer to said question through any form of media. Max made a music video, Sepaus made a documentary, Theryn made a keynote presentation but with all those ideas I chose to write a photo essay (link). 

Through peer critique (thanks Colton) I was able to determine that my first draft answered too much for the direct drove in question rather then my inquiry question.

 

While I was quite happy with my secound  draft (thought it would be “the one”) I think it didint show enough of my ‘on sight evidence’

Third draft

In the end I’m happy with my final product, but if I were to do it again id try and use more of my own photos. Because of all the things I talked about, I unfortunately don’t think my photos (eg. From the missile silo, Grand Canyon or the atomic museum) would do justice to the topics at hand. 

My final comments ere that this project was eye opening to many aspects of political and societal impacts of one major discovery. I love having the opportunity to talk to so many amazing people and be able to learn (quite literally) hands on. The field study really highlighted this projects and I hope to one day re-visit; the Grand Canyon, a few more missile silos and Meow Wolf, while taking any opportunity I have to learn more about the atomic bomb and the Cold War.

 

Thanks, Hannah 🧊🥣🫐💧💦