the.com/atomic bomb
A nuclear weapon that releases massive destructive energy by splitting atoms in a chain reaction.
means A weapon that releases enormous destructive energy by splitting the nuclei of heavy atoms like uranium or plutonium in a chain reaction.
from "Atom" traces back to Greek atomos, "uncuttable" — the thing ancient philosophers imagined as matter's indivisible final piece. The word's cruel irony is that the 20th century's physicists got famous precisely by cutting it: nuclear fission, discovered in the late 1930s, showed the atom could be split after all, releasing energy on a scale no one had harnessed before. The phrase "atomic bomb" entered common use in the 1940s as that discovery was turned into the weapon dropped in 1945, and the name stuck — a small grammatical monument to the moment the "uncuttable" got cut.
- energy source
- uranium or plutonium atoms splitting in a chain reaction
- first test
- trinity, new mexico, july 1945, codenamed by a poem
- irony
- einstein's letter urged it, he never worked on it