Over the past few weeks we have been learning about the Manhatten project and everything that it stands for, the basis of the project was to learn about the importance of the Manhatten oroject then focus on a specific aspect to create a video about, as we read the book we watched parts of the Oppenheimer movie and listened to lectures by our teachers, this was the other key part to our understanding of this project- the notes, PLP likes to notes differently and since we learnt about Zettlekasten notes last year we continued to use those skills to research our topics. While we read the book we learnt about the controversy surrounding the idea of dropping a bomb of this size. Many people didn’t believe it was necessary for the U.S. to use this weapon against Japan and we dived deep into excactly how these kinds of decisions were made and how quickly they occur. 

After understanding just what goes into the decisions for dropping atomic bombs I think it was a good way for us to grasp how those snap decisions determine wars. Throughout the process of making our notes and choosing our video outlines we also had to find an expert on our topic that could potentially give feedback on our videos. This kind of upped the ante a bit for me since I would have to ask someone who knows everything about your topic and how to judge it as an expert. Anyway, my topic revolved around the letter that Einstein and Szilard sent to President Roosevelt and how it kickstarted the Manhatten project, I then began to research my topic and make notes using the Zettlekasten method which was a little repetitive but helpful in the end. We were also tasked to make notes on each chapter of the book Hiroshima as we read it. Our first keystone was to create a Research Zettlekasten that included each of our notes across our whole project. I think the biggest challenge I faced was attempting to use keynote animation, even though we’ve done animations before they are usually in a slide show and I thought that learning how to animate videos in a new app was interesting. Here’s a link to my final video: Video

Overall there were many important aspects of the Manhatten project but what really stuck with me is how absolutely crucial this moment was of  setting a new rule book in science, the way nuclear research has affected our planet or how we can look at it as the beginning to a permanent Cold War, it seems crazy that there’s a ginormous standoff happening everywhere right now but after learning more about just how these events occurs it becomes more clear. I am glad I got to work on this project since I have always been a fan of this topic but specifically getting to make my own version of your to explain a topic that was most interesting to me made the PLP twist even better.