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Silver for the Atomic Bomb
Gemini
Posts: 3,085 ✭
I was watching a show late the other night about the Manhattan Project when it was mentioned that 15.000 tons!!! of silver were needed at Oak Ridge in order to build the huge magnets needed to help produce fissionable uranium for the the first atomic bomb.
Being there was a great shortage of copper here in the US at the time (Who can forget the steel cents?) and copper was the first choice as a conductor we had to go it second best with silver.
(Why there wasn't a penny drive I don't know maybe there was but I guess time was of the essence.)
The silver was then supplied by the West Point Depository.
About 395 million troy ounces which is 13,540 short tons were shipped to Allis-Chalmers in Milwaukee to be cast into cylindrical billets, then rolled into 40-foot strips and wound onto iron cores. Solid-silver bus bars a square foot in cross section crowned each racetrack's long oval. (The racetrack is what is known today as a cyclotron)
The silver at the time was valued at more than $300 million.
Just think of all the pretty coins we could have made...
Being there was a great shortage of copper here in the US at the time (Who can forget the steel cents?) and copper was the first choice as a conductor we had to go it second best with silver.
(Why there wasn't a penny drive I don't know maybe there was but I guess time was of the essence.)
The silver was then supplied by the West Point Depository.
About 395 million troy ounces which is 13,540 short tons were shipped to Allis-Chalmers in Milwaukee to be cast into cylindrical billets, then rolled into 40-foot strips and wound onto iron cores. Solid-silver bus bars a square foot in cross section crowned each racetrack's long oval. (The racetrack is what is known today as a cyclotron)
The silver at the time was valued at more than $300 million.
Just think of all the pretty coins we could have made...
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever
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There probably wasn't a penny drive because, adjusting for inflation, a cent was actually a useable coin. And, in fact, may have been the most useable coin in commerce.
By the way, you can still tour the old graphite reactor in Oak Ridge. Although after 9/11 I think it's by appointment only. Of course, I could gush a lot about how great Oak Ridge was, and is. It's national top 100 schools and the other great things done by the Oak Ridge National Lab...
<< <i>Silver is a better conductor than copper. Any physicists out there that can explain why copper would have been preferred (other than cost)? >>
You are right Barry, I think copper was the best common metal choice for a conducter for the coil windings of the electromagnets but I guess it was scarcer than silver at the time.
<< <i>
<< <i>Silver is a better conductor than copper. Any physicists out there that can explain why copper would have been preferred (other than cost)? >>
You are right Barry, I think copper was the best common metal choice for a conducter for the coil windings of the electromagnets but I guess it was scarcer than silver at the time. >>
Another issue may be that once silver oxidizes it becomes much less conductive therefore less reliable as an electical conductor.
Regards
Brian Kuszmar
qualities. Just read it on discovery.com or one of the tech sites, as I said Im sure we will hear more about it on the news down the road.
Regards
If silver becomes more used in industrial and comercial sectors, the non numesmatic portion of the price in coins will rise. This is what I would like to see happen.
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