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The Manhattan Project was named after the location of Columbia University, where much of the early research for the nuclear program was conducted. The project was instigated in 1939 with an initial grant of $6,000; At its conclusion, it cost around $20 billion (in today's dollars) and involved over 125,000 people. The first bomb was detonated in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and another bomb was used on Japan less than three weeks later. The scientists who built the first bomb referred to it as
"The Gadget," or "The Thing." Visitors at the Trinity test site in the southern New Mexico desert can view a small obelisk with a plaque that reads "Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945." The principle behind the bomb is fission, which occurs when the central part of an atom, the nucleus, breaks up into two equal fragments. These fragments release other neutrons that break up more atoms, causing a chain reaction. Several hundred million volts of energy are released in only millionths of a second.
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