AlexH

While I was sick, I had an interesting entanglement of nuclear and quantum mechanics related topics.

First was Fat Man and Little Boy, a movie starring Paul Newman, about the Manhattan Project, the creation of the United States atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This was a really interesting movie, although not a Hollywood blockbuster. Science geeks would definitely enjoy it, as it dramatizes Robert Oppenheimer and the other scientists’ roles in building the bomb. John Cusack plays Michael Merriman, who is a ficticious character. SPOILER WARNING: He dies as a result of an experiment where two plutonium cores accidentally touch, going critical, and he knocks them apart using his bare hands. I knew that an accident like this had occurred, and I had always assumed that it was before the bombs were dropped in Japan, but apparently it happened in 1946, and was declassified in 1985. Although the movie’s writers changed the timeline, it is still a sad story.

The next piece of the puzzle is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, made in 1964, directed by Stanley Kubrick. This is a spoof movie, but when it came out in the 60’s, it must have caused quite a stir. It makes the US President, the Russian premier, and the entire US military look like fools. And Peter Sellers does an amazing job in his many roles. I need to watch more Pink Panther.

The final entangled thread is Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics which is a summary of quantum mechanics for the layman. It was very interesting, and I was surprised to read about the same people that were involved in the Manhattan Project on the same day that I watched them in a movie. The part that I found most interesting was that even though Einstein contributed so much to the field of relativity and quantum mechanics, he was completely wrong about entanglement!