The Bradbury Science Museum is Los Alamos National Laboratory’s official public museum, helps visitors learn about the Lab’s beginnings during the Manhattan Project and how the Lab’s continuing work enables global security.Information about Little Boy, the first bomb dropped on Japan.A mock-up of Little BoyThe dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima.Information about Fat Man, the second bomb dropped on Japan.Mock-up of Fat Man.The dropping of Fat Man on Nagasaki.A rack for underground nuclear testing.A nuclear device (unarmed!) and the timing and firing equipment.Full-scale model of a Vela Satellite, which is a satellite-based monitoring of nuclear explosions.Model of a B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb.Model of aa DAHRT confinement vessel, which contains various shielding plates that contain the explosion and resultant debris associated with a hydrotest. It also contains collinators, which reduce the amount of scatter, thus enhancing image quality captured during a hydrotest.Model of MK-12A reentry vehicle, which is used in ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), specifically containing W78 warhead when armed.Model of ALCM (Air-Launched Cruise Missile), which would be delivered by a strategic bomber such as the B-52 Stratofortress. The inner content when armed is a W80 nuclear warhead.Models of Major General Leslie Groves (left), and J. Robert Oppenheimer.This is a detonator similar to the one used in the Trinity test, and in Fat Man.Respirators used at Los Alamos.This is a lens that was issued to Trinity Test observers.This armored still camera was used to photograph implosions at Los Alamos.A Mitchell 35mm Movie Camera, this was used to record the world’s first nuclear explosion at the Trinity test.Scale Model of the Gadget, an implosion device of the same design as the Fat Man bomb. The wiring on the surface leads to the detonators that set off the implosion.Criticality experiment mock-up. During a “dragon-type experiment” in which a subcritical assembly is brought close to critical, in 1946, an accident occurred when Louis Slotkin’s screwdriver slipped, allowing two hemispheres of beryllium to enclose a subcritical mass of plutonium, releasing a tremendous burst of gamma rays and neutrons. Slotkin received a fatal dose, and seven others were exposed.
