Do you know where Hanford is in Washington? I didn’t before learning about it’s important role in American history and going there for a school field study with my class. The Hanford site was the plutonium production site for the atomic bombs during WWII all the way through the Cold War. Our studies were based around the question “how did the development of the atomic bomb affect the lives of those living in the Hanford area and what role did they play in ushering in the atomic era?” I know it’s a pretty hard question to jut answer on the spot but if you want to know what I did to answer it, you can read my blog post about the unit and project we did.
This blog post is going to be about the amazing field study my class went on to Hanford Washington, my experience throughout this trip and the behind the scenes of our project. Throughout these filed studies we not only do some fun activity but we get to learn in a more hands on type of learning. Which is so much more effective for me than just reading this information out of a textbook or website. For the four days we were gone on out trip I learned more about the Hanford site and the plutonium production than the few weeks before of research leading up to the trip.
Our trip started off early at 7 am departure from the school, from there we went off to Portland, Oregon. Once we got to Portland we visited the famous Powell’s City of Books the largest new and used book store in the world!!
Our PLP 11 Class in front of Powell’s Books
As a fun side activity within the book store we had to find two books. One had to be the most interesting book about one of our interests that we could find. The second was a challenge to recreate or represent the title of a book in a group. For the individual book I chose was a basketball book about how Silicon Valley built one of the greatest basketball teams in history called Betaball. I thought this was an interesting choice as last year we learned a lot about Silicon Valley and the technology industry and it related to basketball.
For the group book challenge Hannah, Claire and I decided to represent the book title “The Best Places to Pee in Portland.”
After visiting Powell Books we went for dinner at a restaurant called Fire on the Mountain were we ate hot wings. I decided it was a good idea to try the hottest wing they had which wasn’t all that bad at the start but it turn out to be VERY spicy. I even had to sign consent form to eat them.
Class photo in fron t of the restaurant
Following dinner we then went to a McManamins Kennedy School which was an old school transformed into a hotel, movie theatre and restaurant. This was a very cool place to go and see! As a class we went to Mamma Mia 2 in their theatre which was a good end to the first day on our field study.
McManamins Theatre
First thing on the second morning we went off to Reed College, to see how their nuclear research reactor works. Beforehand we kind of went over how one works in class however that can’t top the experience of actually going and seeing one with your very own eyes. The reactor produces 200 kilowatts of power which is equal to 200 microwave ovens, and has been open for the last 50 years.
Before turning on the reactor the student showing us the reactor answered many of our questions including talking to us about the water around the reactor and some interesting facts. The depth of the water around the reactor which is 25 ft with a temperature of 18.9 degrees Celsius. The radiation of the reactor is measured in millirems and rems. This reactor produces very little radiation less than some of the radiation you might come across in your day to day life. Which was very surprising to me as we were right beside a nuclear reactor however the water acts as a shield protecting us from radiation.
The reed college reactor
When the reactor is running it glows bright blue at full power but we didn’t get to see the bright blue colour as the reactor had a SCRAM. A SCRAM stands for safety control axe man and only happens around 10 times per year. Even though we didn’t get to see the reactor fully working we were actually pretty lucky to see it scram as it’s pretty rare for that to happen.
A short stop we made was to the Vista house xoverlooking the Columbia river. We took advantage of this for the creation of our videos for the “Manhattan Project” Project. We filled some short clips there which in the end was one of the many places we went to that really enhances our video.
Photos from Vista House:
Another stop we made was at the Maryhill Museum of Arts which was a really cool place with interesting pieces yet it was in a somewhat weird location. It’s not a location I would have expected, while we were driving there, the vegetation around was very dry and barren but when we got onto the Maryhill Museum property everything was well kept and the grass was very green.
Within the museum they had some really interesting artifacts including a collections of chess sets from all around the world, some famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin and many eclectics of Queen Marie of Romania. In the museum we had a mini challenge assignments where we had to make a video about ourselves talking about the artifact we found the most interesting and why. I decided to talk about the artifacts of Queen Marie as I found this artifacts the most interesting and the history behind the Eastern European countries. This is the short video I created:
The next place we visited was the Hanford site, two separate times. The first was for a pre war historic tour and the second was a tour of the B reactor. Both were very insightful and gave us a lot of useful information for our videos.
On the first tour we had two amazing guides who showed us the Hanford site included how the town of White Bluffs incorporating into the history. White Bluffs was the town that was in the location of the Hanford site before the government took over the location.There were upwards of 1000 people who lived in and just outside the town, and when they were told to leave they were given only 30 days to pack up their belonging. This was just one of the interesting facts we were told about on our tour. We also got to interview our guides for our video which was really great to get someone with that knowledge to back up the points we were making.
On second tour we got the opportunity to go and see the B reactor the first even full scale reactor. The guides on this tour were also very knowledgeable as they worked on the Hanford site. The best part was of this tour was definitely getting to explore the entire reactor building. I didn’t know how it was until you see it in person, it’s way bigger than the reactor at the reed college measuring 14 by 12 m and weighting 1200 short tons. The footage we got onsite at the reactor were really good for the videos we created.
B reactor
After visiting the Hanford site our trip was over except for visiting one more location the mighty Red Lobster where our class tried to conquer the endless shrimp. Let’s just say we weren’t even close to finishing their shrimp. Although a couple people in our class did end up eating quite a few Ethan and Kate both ate 140 shrimp each.
That was the end of our trip, although it was pretty short we learned a lot and got to do a bunch of fun activities. I would say that this field study helped me better understand the creation of the atomic bomb and the Hanford site in Washington.