Today is the anniversary of the Little boy being dropped on Hiroshima now I’m pretty sure they were both dropped today, I could be wrong on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But why do I always hear more about the Little Boy and not much about Fat Man, and what is the difference between the two, how does an atomic bomb work
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Little Boy was first atomic weapon ever used, which is why you hear about it more.
Little Boy was an enriched Uranium bomb, and detonated by shooting a smaller piece at a bigger piece. Fat man was a Plutonium bomb, and detonated by compressing a solid sphere.
Atomic bombs work by triggering a chain reaction of splitting atoms. Both Uranium and Plutonium atoms are prone to splitting, and release particles when they do so that cause neighbouring atoms to also split. If you get enough of them squeezed together close enough, then they split fast enough to cause a large explosion.
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