How big was the first nuclear bomb, code-named Trinity? Detonated in the desert of New Mexico just three weeks before Hiroshima, it's energy was far beyond any conventional bomb. But how big was it? In this first episode on the physics of explosions we recount how the British physicist G.I. Taylor estimated the energy of the bomb just by looking at the pictures of the explosion. Taylor's method requires very limited mathematical background, while being surprisingly effective. It is a classical introduction to an outlook on Nature revealing the mechanics at play behind motion.
*Video Content*
On this page, you will find the pdf slides used in the making of the video, links to the historic footage of the Trinity test, and some of the gifs, images and plots used in the video. Feel free to use this content in any way you see fit.
Taylor's data on the Trinity explosion are available at the end of this page, together with the references associated with this video.
Slides
A1_SLIDES_compressed.pdfDownload our slideshow for your lectures / presentations.
Films
GIFs
Images
Plots
References
Source of the Trinity footage and pictures: Los Alamos National Laboratory https://www.lanl.gov/
Alex Wellerstein https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/trinity/
https://www.atomicheritage.org/histor...
https://www.atomicheritage.org/profil...
https://www.atomicheritage.org/histor...
Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research
Authors:
Marc-Antoine Fardin (Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, Université Paris Cité)
Mathieu Hautefeuille (Institut de Biologie Paris-Seine, Sorbonne Université)
Vivek Sharma (Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago)
Acknowledgements:
Anna Part (Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History)
Greg Spriggs (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)