The V2 Engineer

Hans Edler worked with other scientists on the V 2 bomb. No one scientist / engineer can be blamed for its creation.  

The doodlebug:

The forerunner of the V 2, the V 1, was also known as the doodlebug. These were powered by diesel and only landed when they ran out of fuel. It sounded like a bus or lorry running down the hill out of control. You worried when it went quiet; that was when it would fall to the ground and discharge its bomb. The V2 was more accurate with its targets and was much quieter.

Read an account here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/77/a4409877.shtml     

 

Some interesting statistics:

About 2,700 people were killed in Britain by the V2.

At least 20,000 people died constructing the V2.   

The Manhattan (development of the nuclear bomb) project cost the US $2 billion (27 billion today).

The cost of V 1 and V2 was $20 billion. 

 

Technical details of the V2 :

At launch the A-4 propelled itself for up to 65 seconds on its own power
The fuel and oxidizer pumps were steam turbines, and the steam was produced by concentrated hydrogen peroxide with potassium permanganate catalyst. Both the alcohol and oxygen tanks were an aluminium-magnesium alloy.
The combustion burner reached a temperature of 2500–2700 °C (4500 – 4900 °F). The fuel was  pumped into the main burner chamber through 1,224 nozzles, which assured the correct mixture of alcohol and oxygen at all times.
The V-2 was guided by four external rudders on the tail fins.
The V2 was the first rocket to be designed that could go into space. However, it never went up, only horizontally to attack London.    

What Hans told Renate:

You know also that I was involved in war work even before you left Germany so there was no way that I could leave with you or your mother. If I’d tried to, it may have meant the two of you would have not been able to get away. Neither could I refuse to work on the very weapons that were causing havoc in England. I did go a little more slowly sometimes …. I hope I did not prolong the agony.

 (Letter 25 July 1946)

 

Points to ponder

Germany was prevented from developing weapons after World War I.

Should some weapons be illegal?

Does every country have a right to defend itself? 

Physics in the Early 20th Century

 

Modern ideas

What do you know about the following?

Radiation         Relativity         Quantum mechanics 

 

The vastness of the universe

Few people realize how much our picture of the universe has changed in 100 years. At the end of the 19th century, the universe was thought to contain only hundreds of thousands of stars arranged in no particularly interesting patterns. The most distance stars were thought to be about 100,000 light years away (meaning that it would take light 100,000 years to travel from Earth to such distant stars; 1 light-year is about 10 trillion kilometres or 6 trillion miles). Today, astronomers have observed objects that are about 10,000,000,000 [= ten billion] light years away. Furthermore, they have discovered that the universe contains many interesting structures. Amazingly, it was not until the 1920's that it was realized that galaxies exist. Galaxies are vast collections of stars grouped together in a relatively localized region of the universe. A typical galaxy contains 100,000,000,000 [=one hundred billion] stars and is 100,000 light years in size.

Some important physicists

What do you know about the following scientists? 

Neils Bohr       Werner Heisenberg    Erwin Schrodinger      Frederic Joliot-Curie

Enrico Fermi   H.G. Wells                   Leo Szilard                   Vannevar Bush

Thomas Kuhn

 

National Socialism and the scientists – two sides to every story

At the peak of atomic and nuclear physics, there was a rise in National Socialism. The Nazis drove out many German scientists, including Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassmann due to “anti-intellectualism” according to McGee. This led to certain German and Jewish intellectuals fleeing into the arms of German enemies, bringing nuclear research to other countries such as the United States. Ultimately, these escaped researchers contributed to the development and research of atomic ware fare under the code name—the Manhattan Project.   

Breakthroughs 1912-1947

1915 – relativity          1916 – wormhole        1917 – cosmological constant           

1919 – proton discovered       1922 – primeval soup 1925- size of universe contended      

1926- uncertainty principle    1927- universe is expanding   1928-antimatter exists

1929 – galaxies moving away                        1932 – electrons / splitting the atom 

1934 – dark matter     1939 – nuclear fission

Nuremberg During World War II

Nuremberg is famous

·         For its Parade Ground where mass rallies were held 

·         Nuremberg laws

·         Bomb damage

·         Nuremberg trials

So, Nuremberg is famous for four reasons to do with the war. 

Not bombed so much? (But see picture) 

Nuremberg was not bombed much - the major reason the War Crimes trials were held there was that the city had not suffered much war damage, and the courthouse and adjacent were large and intact when the war ended, RAF Bomber Command targetted all major German cities in an attempt to kill as many German civilians as possible. USAAF targetted all railway junctions in Germany (including those in Nuremberg and Munich) so as to destroy the German transport infrastructure and thus damage their war effort.

http://www.weknowtheanswer.com/q/why-were-munich-and-nuremberg-bombed-during-world-war-ii

 

Some facts about Nuremberg:

·         Mediaeval town

·         Town built inside a castle

·         Famous for toys 

·        Early centre of humanism, science, printing, and mechanical invention