DESCRIPTION

In Critical Assembly, Jim Sanborn has re-created the moment in 1945 when Manhattan Project scientists first fashioned a practical device powered by nuclear fission. The scene is a small building in an isolated canyon, far enough from other buildings to contain the radiation. On the tables are "criticality experiments," their purpose to determine how much plutonium 239 can be packed into a bomb for maximum yield without making the bomb unsafe to handle.

---