Kaboom! In an instant two kilometers of a thriving downtown city are leveled. At the hypocenter the pressure exceeds thirty-five tons per square meter and the air is swirling at four hundred forty meters per second. The above is an accurate description of the destruction that that took place inside the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The twentieth century was a period in which great advances were made in terms of technology. Perhaps the greatest advancements of technology lay in the gigantic field of destructive weaponry. Advancements in such a field go on and off in spurts of creativity, each challenging the very imaginative capabilities that make humans beings so unique. These advancements not so coincidently take place most often when the world is engulfed in strife and chaos. The reason for these advancements taking place most often during world wars lies in the fact that factions are always looking for the fatal edge on the battlefield that will decide who the victor is when the day is done and the battle lost or won. The winning side can often be dictated by simply who is better equipped. An example that is especially relevant is the competition that took place between the U.S. and Germany over who would develop nuclear arms first. President Truman himself knew that whoever invented a working nuclear bomb first would dominate the Second World War. This very logic led the American wartime leader into forming the Manhattan Project and in doing so shaping the outcome of the war and societies of the future. Nuclear weaponry, specifically the atomic bomb was a new frontier because it incorporated scientific principles that never before had been used, the effects when these principles were applied and the profound change in life this new frontier of technology caused were astounding.
             The scientific principles that allowed the United States to design and build a working Atomic bomb are part of what was then...