Driving Question

“How did the development of the atomic bomb change the world?”

What is the most important event in human history? To think of it, how could one possibly decide?

Was it the discovery of fire? The invention of the printing press? The signing of the Magna Carta? The moon landing? That one time Australia declared war on Emu birds and lost? The release of the first movie of the greatest movie franchise of all time on May 25, 1977? The sandwich I had for lunch? 

Unfortunately, in the grand scale of things, it’s not up to my personal opinion to decide (even though I should totally be making all these decisions.) Turns out historians use a little something called “Historical Significance.” 

Historical significance defines the importance of events with this criteria: 

1. Did it evoke CHANGE? 

2. Was it REVEALING? 

3. Is it CONSTRUCTED? 

4. Does it VARY over TIME and from GROUP to GROUP

And can be divided into these categories:

– Individually significant

– Regionally significant

– Nationally significant

– Globally significant 

So unfortunately, the sandwich I had for lunch isn’t very historically significant. BUT- the Manhattan Project is. In fact, it is so important that, after completing this project, I’d say it is the most historically significant event in all of human history. Why, might you ask? Well, you’ll just have to wait and find out *wink* 

Let’s go back to the beginning. 

NOOOO! NOT THAT FAR BACK!

…I’d like to think I’m funny, but I’ve been awake since 7 (which isn’t very early… BUT I’M STILL TIRED!!!) and my self deprived brain can’t take this anymore. 

I meant, back to last month, when we were first introduced to our second humanities project of the year: The Manhattan Project² 

Of course I’d heard of the Manhattan Project before. Did I know it wasn’t in Manhattan? No.

Honestly, the atomic bomb and the Cold War were parts of history that I surprisingly didn’t know much about (I got stuck in Victorian England for a couple of years, don’t ask me about green wallpaper.) My interest in it definitely sparked when Christopher Nolan announced the release of his latest film Oppenheimer, which I anticipated eagerly for months until it finally released and didn’t find the time to see it 🙁

Anyways, I was pretty excited to start this unit. We started the project with a little launch assignment to review the meaning of historical significance. I went a little overboard and rabbit-holed… which I think summarizes the entire project pretty well. 

(Click to Read!) 

Having watched Across the Spiderverse at the beginning of summer and then obsessing over it for the rest of the summer, you can see how it crossed my mind. 

Was it the best decision for a historical significance write-up? Maybe not *stares aggressively at historical significance requirement #4* Was I going to let that stop me? 

No. 

Overall, I’m very proud of the writing and research I did for this assignment.

(Click to Read!) 

Speaking of research, we took notes while listening to Mr Hughes’ lecture, which was our first taste of the Manhattan Project. With that information, we were then split into our groups and started working on our final product. I teamed up with Sabrina, Cooper, Gwen, and Cale! (Go check out their blogs!) 

However, what was the final product? 

Well, with our amazing graphic design skills and the fantastic writing skills we reviewed last project, we were assigned to create our own books on the historical significance of the Manhattan Project. 

I found that our greatest strength as a group was our idea generation. I found that our ideas bounced off each other, and it was really fun coming up with ways we could make our book work. One of the main things we decided from the beginning was that our “take” would be that we’d centre on the ethicality of the Manhattan Project. You can see this in the claim we developed: 

We decided that we wanted to incorporate a “newspaper” style to our book. Along the way, that idea developed into more of a “Netflix crime documentary but it’s a scrapbook made by teenagers.” Literally, look at this.

See what I mean?

Anyways, as part of my ✨learning plan✨ this year (which is kinda like a New Year’s resolution, but in September and school… and mandatory), I said that I wanted to work on my leadership skills. Being the introverted, conflict-hating workaholic that I am, I will admit I did not enjoy my experience, BUT I STILL LEARNED A LOT FROM IT. 

I discovered that the most crucial part of being a leader is communication. There definitely was a learning curve, because in the beginning, I struggled at assigning work to the group. I didn’t really know how to ask people to do stuff, and I think there was a lot of confusion as a result. It didn’t help that during the first week, part of my group disappeared off on the New Mexico trip (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go :’) BUT I heard it was pretty cool- they got to visit actual sites from the Manhattan projects!)  Luckily, we shakily pulled through to the end. However, my greatest regret was that I didn’t learn to communicate quicker. I hope to use these skills in my next group project. 

Another thing we struggled with as a group was the size of our book. There was so much research we wanted to include that the book ended up being longer than expected (and took much more work.) Though I don’t regret the variety of topics, if I were to redo this project, I would try to condense it down to be more manageable. 

In terms of my personal work, I’m very proud of the stuff I did. Although I did do a lot of research and writing, I think my greatest improvement stems from the graphic design portion. Here some examples (the ones I like best):

I mostly worked on chapters 3 & 4. I was particularly interested in the pop culture impacts of the nuclear bomb and the first person accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I also created the newsreel at the beginning of the book. I really wanted to replicate the look of those reels in mine, and I think it turned out to be pretty cool B)

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the book we created. Although there’s still some things I would’ve liked to improve (communication, workload…), I think we did a great job!

You can read our book here:

Oh no. You thought I was done, did you? NOPE! 

We also completed a multi-paragraph composition from an Oppenheimer speech. We wrote this piece in class (*gasp* a test in PLP???) and had to answer the following:

How do you think Oppenheimer was changed by his participation in the Manhattan Project and the creation of such a devastating weapon? Based on the context of his speech, do you think he regrets his contributions to the first atomic bomb?

I found this assignment to be… interesting. I mean the topic was really interesting, but time limits? Not so much. Turns out I need to practice writing quicker, because wow I was so slow. Ok, ok. In all honesty, I don’t think I did too bad. I would’ve liked some time to think about it, but it has some substance (hopefully.) 

Here it is: 

Luckily for us, we got some time to revise it afterwards! 

Final Draft: 

Driving Question

“How did the development of the atomic bomb change the world?”

Taking the words from our book, the development of the atomic bomb changed the world, because it changed the way we see it. For the first time, we had the power to destroy ourselves at the press of a button. This allowed us to see ourselves in a different way. For the first time, we had become Death: destroyer of worlds.

However, in spite of all this, we were also given a choice. We are only destroyers of worlds if we choose to be it. 

(I meant this gif as a “mic-drop” moment,  but with all the talk of nuclear bombs, I’m not sure this gif is so fitting after all…)