to sustain a chain reaction, were brought together rapidly in a gun barrel to form a supercritical mass that exploded instantaneously. Confidence was so high that this model would work that no test was conducted, and it was first employed in military action over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. (http://neutrino.nuc.berkeley.edu/neutronics/todd/nuc.bomb.html)The second way of detonating the atomic bomb is through implosion. Implosion is the detonation of explosives on the outer surface that causes the detonation/shock wave to move inward. It didn't use uranium 235. Instead the bomb used plutonium 239. The scientist used plutonium 239 instead of using uranium 235 because uranium 235 was harder to get. To explode the plutonium 239 bomb it must first be imploded by compressing the subcritical spherical fissionable mass with specially designed explosives. That means there is not enough fissionable material to detonate the atomic bomb. The engineers working on the bomb had to carefully design a smooth, symmetrical implosion setup so that the shock waves would reach each part of the core at the same time. Once the shock wave is transmitted to the fissionable core it compresses the core and raises the density to the point of superciticality, which means there is enough fissionable material. And this leads to a great explosion. So, the fissionable mass is crushed to a great density, and once the mass has reached that supercritical density it explodes outwards. (http://neutrino.nuc.berkeley.edu/neutronics/todd/nuc.bomb.html)On July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic bomb, coded name, "The Gadget", was tested. This atomic bomb used plutonium 239 in detonating the bomb. When the bomb exploded, a huge mushroom cloud of radioactive vapor covered the sky. On the soil, there were fragments of green radioactive glass. The blast was equal to the force of about 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilograms) of dynamite. The bomb was 2...
