Hacker News Reader

Comment by fophillips | Hacker News Reader

You go tell Feynman the Manhattan project wasn't about science.

From "Los Alamos from Below" by Feynman:

"What was happening, of course, was that all the boys had decided to work on this and to stop their research in science. All science stopped during the war except the little bit that was done at Los Alamos. And that was not much science; it was mostly engineering."

Good way of putting it so that people can understand. Feynman was a scientist, not an engineer, so that's a clue that the Manhattan project involved science, not just engineering.

The same is true of fusion research. That's why it's "research", not merely "development".

In particular, the physics of plasma instabilities has always been quite imperfectly understood, and that has been one of the key problems with controlled fusion since the 1950s.

I thought his role on the Manhattan project was keeping the IBM calculators going?

That is far from the only thing he did. He was the wunderkind of the project, and he did all kinds of things.

See for instance Gleick's Feynman biography, "Genius".

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius

Another good read about the project is this bio: "The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor"

...which is obviously mostly about Taylor (on the Manhattan Project), but has some Feynman anecdotes.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Bindin...

The Manhattan project was a boy band or had a significant boy band component. It clearly involved a number of amateur male musicians[1][2].

Science is about understanding, engineering is about building something.

If the Manhattan project had resulted in no new understanding, but had created a nuclear bomb it would have been a success. The science was incidental to the success of the project.

Engineering is built on science so there will often be scientists involved in Engineering projects, however the assumption with an Engineering project is that the science is already understood (or at least significantly understood) and so the main effort is in the design and construction.

The problem with Science projects is that they are hard to sell to the public. Thats because its hard for someone who isn't a domain expert to put a value on its significance. This is why a lot of Science projects are dressed up as Engineering projects[1] to sell them to the public.

Its pretty clear that the above fusion research is a Science project, i.e about understanding.

If this facility is being used to produce new bombs then that is an engineering project but if it is just being used to gain understanding about existing bombs then its science.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Love_of_music

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

You mistake my point -- the nature of the work Feynman did at Los Alamos was different than the nature of the work he did at the Institute for Advanced Study. All of the work was science, but at Los Alamos the target was a working bomb, at Princeton it was a deeper and more fundamental understanding of nature, and thus criteria for judging is different.

The Manhattan Project can be judged by the simple question, is there a working bomb? Evaluating basic research is much harder.

That's not what was said. OP said it's not about fundamental science, which is somewhat true. Nuclear weapons research isn't fundamental, although it does require some fundamental research.

Can't tell him anything. He's dead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com