Richard Fenyman’s Looking Glass
Richard Fenyman was the only person to see the Trinity explosion
with naked eyes. He decided he wouldn’t see through dark goggles,
so he climbed into the cab of a truck facing the test site.
The truck windshield protected his eyes from ultraviolet rays.
The fireball turned from dark to white to a spectacular yellow
and then to red. After five seconds the darkness returned but with air
and sky filled with a purple glow. The shock wave from the blast
sucked up chunks of dirt from the desert soil.
Some of it melted and settled, cooling into a radioactive green glass
called trintite. Some of it floated away. Tiny portions
ended up in a river east of Alamogordo and was taken
to a strawboard factory being used to pack Kodak X-ray film.
When the final exosure was developed it was mottled
with dark blotches and tiny pinpoint stars. A trickster, Richard,
played bongos on the mesa. He revealed locker combinations
including silly notes and thus exposed nuclear secrets.
11 thoughts on "Richard Fenyman’s Looking Glass"
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the colors, and how it happened “sucked up chunks of dirt” – like a space vacuum dropped into the desert – love this sequence. the bongos on the mesa and the silliness of the physicist cracked me up.
Love the title !!!!
You are taking us to school!!!
The series is amazing.
I really like the way this one’s shape echoes yesterday’s.
Oh, and I love you 🙂
love from the political to the personal in the last lines
Great descriptions, as always, and a fascinating, riveting account. What a great sequence.
Love the details and visuals in this – the colors and the pinpoint stars!
The balance of detail and image, information and world-building, is so complex and interesting. I love the sound of “A trickster, Richard,/played bongos on the mesa.”
another ‘yes’ vote from me, for all the color stuff.
nice suite/series..
And yet it was Oppenheimer who got cancelled.
Wonderful series of portraits of these blythe bombmakers. Your typo gremlin struck again in Feynman’s name, but who cares? We know who you mean.
Ha! I thought I was getting right it. You are at a higher pay grade than me. Thank you. I didn’t have a chance to check Coleman for typos because he posted in the middle of the night and I wished I had.
Lol…..the typo gremlins are watered on a regular schedule at our house. Lol “they are gleeful critters”
I think “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” is the best autobiography of a physicist. I highly recommend it to any who’ve not read it, and he discusses this true story in the book, Linda. Nice writing, as always!