It was built for a war that ended too soon to use it, so it found other victims instead.
A metal ball built for a third atomic bomb was about the size of which piece of sports gear?
A softball The plutonium sphere, first nicknamed Rufus, stayed at Los Alamos when Japan surrendered before the bomb could be shipped.
Skipping the safety spacers the rules called for, what everyday tool did one physicist use to hold back a nuclear reaction?
A screwdriver Louis Slotin twisted the screwdriver to keep two shells apart around the core, and Enrico Fermi warned he would be "dead within a year" if he kept it up.
Seconds after the screwdriver slipped, Slotin knew he had taken a fatal dose. What did he immediately start doing to help his coworkers?
Sketching the room His sketch helped doctors work out how much radiation each survivor got, and his own body had shielded them from much of the blast.
Scientists said this risky stunt was like poking which fire-breathing creature?
Tickling the dragon's tail Slotin, the local expert, often performed it in blue jeans and cowboy boots in front of a roomful of watchers, after an earlier physicist died from dropping a brick onto the same core.
After two deaths, how did scientists run these dangerous core tests from then on?
By remote control Machines and TV cameras let everyone stay a quarter mile away, while the sphere got its new name, the demon core, and was later melted down.
