The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How To Build an Atomic Bomb

Forget what you heard about the scientists who built the first atomic bomb or how it works. This is spot on accurate. A bit of math involved but you can gloss over that as it is well explained in simple English. This book was classified for decades until it became so well known that it was pointless to maintain the classification.

Nice little book which explains the physics behind the atomic bomb.

It was a total surprise to realize each and everyone of the Los Alamos team was handed the mimeographed primer prior to commencing their work in the lab. The amount of info that was already understood, the insightful, intelligent guesses are just spellbinding. You get a true sense of the absolute conviction that the bomb will be built, it will be dropped and it will work. Concurrent projects of uranium separation at Oakridge and the manufacture of plutonium at Hanford Washington...proceeded with total conviction even though the explosive power of fission, while calculated had never been observed. In today's world where everything is miniaturized and communication is at the speed of light, nonetheless, both the uranium bomb and the plutonium bomb were only a few pounds in weight as necessitated by 1945 technology. With higher quality nuclear materials and infintely better tampers and higher neutron efficiency, you can only guess the small size of today's devastating nuclear devises.

However, not so hot for insight. My favorite book for learning calculus is less than 200 pages, the one I had in school was over 1,000 pages. If you are looking for the first book, this is definitively that first book. If you are trying to fill in some holes and you have, say, a modern bachelor's degree; this book is a fun hour read.

This is a good book for someone who already knows a little about modern physics in general or the making of an atomic bomb. Written by the scientist who was charged with bringing new arrivals to the Los Alamos up to speed. Reading this book is like enrolling in a short course taught by a master teacher. You learn the same things that a scientist or engineer working on the Manhattan Project would have learned.If you have a month and want to learn as much as possible, read Richard Rhode's books on the subject The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Be prepared to be exhausted. If you have an afternoon and want to learn as much as possible sit down with this book. You'll learn a surprising amount of material. It's the ultimate crash course in fission bombs.

This book gives a brief and highly technical summary of what was known about nuclear fission in 1942 and how to go about turning this knowledge into a "practical weapon". Great fun to read if you have an engineering or physics degree or similar background knowledge. The author has extensively annotated and updated the terse original lecture notes that were given to new arrivals at Los Alamos. Interestingly, the annotations now take up more space that the original notes. These annotations may help to make the subject accessible to a non-technical audience as they provide invaluable historical and technical background. Invaluable for anyone interested in science history and/or the Manhattan Project.

This book was a new addition to my library on 'Special Weapons'. I've had a long term interest in all things dealing with them. The Los Alamos Primer would have been a great purchase if it had simply consisted of the original lectures. The 4 men who contribute to this work have produced an important book.Richard Rhodes introduced and edited (conducted) this book. I believe any book with his name attached, is worth a buy. I find his writing to be very clear and interesting.Robert Serber, who gave the original lectures, does an excellent job of a literary 'voice over' on them. He explains, expounds, and fills out the basic lectures.On top of what those 2 guys have made, this box of Cracker Jacks came with a very nice surprise. Included in this book are 2 old (1940-41) memorandums by Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch. These were instrumental in the notification of the Atomic potentials to the US/British governments. I have read about them, but never expected to read them. In 3 words- BUY THIS BOOK!

The annotations cover some of what was learned later, corrections to the math, and the human context. This makes more interesting reading than the original handouts.The biographic appendix in this edition of the primer is a nice Who's Who of the Los Alamos community.The site nuclearweaponarchive.org discusses the engineering design of nuclear weapons in more detail, based on later testing.This shows where they were at the start of the process. The basic facts of the physics involved are now in the public record, which as Serber says, is not the same knowing as the engineering details.If you just skim the equations and read the conclusions in this book, I think you could understand the basics with today's high school math and physics. It takes more math and physics to derive some of the formulas.For more of the human dimension I'd refer you to the biography of Serber Peace and War, still available as a used book, and to Richard Rhodes' books. The biography describes his trip to Japan to assess the bomb effects, and his post-war career. He was not treated as badly as Oppenheimer, but he did face some questioning in the McCarthy Era.