science · 16 November 1942 · 82 years ago
In 1942, work began on an experimental atomic pile to investigate the world's first artificial nuclear chain reaction. In a makeshift lab underneath the University's football stands at Stagg Field, physicists and staffers, worked around the clock to built a lattice of 57 layers of uranium metal and uranium oxide embedded in graphite blocks. A wooden structure supported the graphite pile. The research would be an important contribution to the Manhattan Project, a secret wartime project to develop nuclear weapons, which initiated the modern nuclear age. Little more than two weeks later, on 2 Dec 1942, the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved by Enrico Fermi and his team.
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