Turning Point of the 20th Century: The Atomic Bomb

Zhouhong He Rohail Khan Roland Nowak Ying Zheng

Group Website Senior Division

When we were choosing our topic, we wanted to do a topic relating to world history. We immediately thought of the World Wars. Our group members are all interested in science; therefore, we began to think of events that happened in the World Wars involving science. Individually, we picked a topic we wanted to research and decided to vote for the final one. Coincidentally, we all picked the atomic bomb that ended WWII and that became our final research topic. After deciding on our topic, we searched the internet to narrow our topic into main points we wanted to focus on. These main points are: the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear race, and the future nuclear technologies. Each group member was assigned a separate point. Zhouhong chose the Manhattan Project and the nuclear race, Ying focused on the bombings in Japan, and Roland and Rohail researched the largest topic of future nuclear technologies and the Chernobyl Incident. We searched our school library and local librarys catalog to find books, an example being The Atom Bomb by Tamara Roleff; some books included primary sources. We searched databases and found articles and primary sources, such as newspapers like New York Times about Hiroshima and nuclear weapons treaties. We used search engines and limited the websites to government and educational sites. We chose to do a website because the atomic bomb was such a significant innovation that we thought it would be most appropriate to express this topic through a modern technology, the internet. On our website, we included brief background information describing the beginning of WWII and the involvement of the United States on the first page. In addition, our thesis statement was introduced. In order to incorporate the theme into our website, we created different tabs (leading to pages), each explaining one of our four major points: the Manhattan project, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the nuclear race, and the impact of the atomic

bomb on the future. Additional sub-categories are included under the tab about the bombs influences in the future and the Manhattan project, describing the Chernobyl Incident and famous figures respectively. The supporting facts for our thesis statement can be further explored in these different topics. We further integrated the theme through our analysis page, where we analyzed and stated clearly how each of our thesis points relates to this years theme, turning points in history. Our topic is the atomic bomb, and it represents the theme turning points in history, in many ways. The atomic bomb was a turning point because it was the first use of nuclear weapons in history. Secondly, the atomic bomb ended World War II when it was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, the atomic bomb signaled the beginning of the nuclear race; furthermore, this international tension between the United States and Soviet Union was evident during the Cold War. Lastly, the drop of the atomic bomb during World War II had many significant impacts in the future.