Thin Man (nuclear bomb) Thin Man (nuclear bomb) "Thin Man" was the code name for a proposed plutonium gun-type nuclear bomb using plutonium-239 which the United States was developing during the Manhattan Project. They aborted its development when they discovered that the spontaneous fission rate of their nuclear reactor-bred plutonium was too high for use in a gun-type design, due to the high concentration of the isotope plutonium-240. In 1942, prior to the Army taking over wartime atomic research, Robert Oppenheimer held conferences in Chicago in June and Berkeley, California, in July at which various engineers and physicists discussed nuclear bomb design issues. A
The Gadget (novel) The Gadget (novel) The Gadget is a young adult historical novel written by Paul Zindel published in 2001 by Random House and the final book of "The Zone Unknown" series. It tells the story of a 13-year-old boy named Stephen Orr, whose father is a physicist working on a covert project to develop the atomic bomb. in 1945 13-year-old Stephen Orr has just reached the gates of the top secret military base in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He has come to join his father, a physicist working on making an atomic bomb. Though his father is forbidden to discuss the