To start off our second last year in PLP and in high school, we were introduced to a very exciting and intriguing project, accompanied by a trip to New Mexico. 

Let’s get started by telling you a little bit about our latest unit, over the summer we were given the task of reading a book titled “the age of radiance”, this book was basically a complete summary of the history of radiation, all the different types of radiation, and nuclear energy. When we were assigned this book, none of us really knew why we were supposed to read it, but we trusted the teachers knowing that reading this book would be a critical task in order to be successful for our first project. On the first day of school we were introduced to the manhattan project. Now, this wasn’t a project for us, this was once a project for the United States military. And it is also what our first project, and trip, would be about.

In World War II, The United States military began research in development on nuclear weapons in fear that the Nazi’s were already close to the production of one. This would lead to the creation of the manhattan project, which was dedicated to the research and production of nuclear weapons, they would later be responsible for the invention of both nuclear bombs used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing’s that were crucial in the Japanese’s surrender and ultimately, the end of World War II.

Our project turned out to be a very exciting one, mostly because it was possible for vast self-expression through this project. We were tasked with creating a book in the very popular book creation app “book creator”, that covered the ins and outs of the atomic bomb, in fact, we had to answer the question “how was the atomic bomb historicity significant” while also providing detailed explanations about the history of the manhattan project and the science of the atomic bomb. But lets not get too into the details about the project itself, because this blog post is about the trip to New Mexico.

For the trip, our class would be flown to New Mexico, to visit the manhattan project’s research and test site called “trinity”. The trinity test site played a crucial role in the development of the atomic bomb, in fact, it was the first place in the entire world where a nuclear explosive was detonated.

As most of you probably know, this summer I flew to Rwanda, Africa. During the trip our group of 16 people stayed in a private school in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. At the private school, we helped run summer camps for the the local children. We also visited some extremely rural villages, that we very eye opening to all of us.

Leading up to the trip were months and months of fundraising, the trip (without fundraising) would cost around $5,000 but with help from strangers, friends, and family, I was able to knock off almost half of the cost. Obviously $2,500 is a very significant amount of money, and was what ultimately lead to me not attending this fiend study in New Mexico.

Below are some photos I took during my trip to Rwanda.

Now, back to the trip. Just because I didn’t go on the trip doesn’t mean I don’t have to do the same work as the people that did. I was given the same assignment, same project, and same tasks as everyone who went on the trip, the only difference. I had to do pretty much everything online instead of actually being there in real life. That meant visiting the trinity sites associating websites, looking through other museum websites, and doing interviews with people around the school, instead of doing interviews with people from New Mexico. I found it pretty easy to work on my book with pretty much everyone else away in New Mexico. It was also a great time to work on work in other subjects when I had free time, the annex is an even better place to be in when there’s Peace and quiet.

For my next blog post, I will be covering my book. This time, you will get a chance to actually read the book. I will also be going more into the research process, creation, revision, and presentation processes.

See you in the next one!