3 ms·

Amazing that it working on that stuff was an individual experiment, with your hands in the mix!

userbinator 10y ago
People knew in general far less about the effects of ionizing radiation at the time --- you could even say Slotin's death was one of the datapoints that lead to better understanding.
- ufmace 10y ago
  I just finished watching the TV series Manhattan, about the Manhattan project. It was supposedly written with help from historians and physicists who know their stuff. This reminded me of one of their plot points that seemed realistic - a character suffered a potentially dangerous exposure, and the base doctor, feeling out of his depth, tries to reach out to somebody who knows better. After a few hours of chasing bureaucracy and secrecy, he eventually discovers that the official expert is listed as himself! There really isn't anybody who has any idea how exposure affected people, and they're just pushing ahead anyways because it's wartime.
InclinedPlane 10y ago
To say that people were cavalier about the dangers of radiation back then would be a severe understatement.
- hga 10y ago
  They weren't that cavalier, else, for example, a lot more people working on the project, especially at the fissionable production plants, would have died from radiation exposure, instead, it was just these two working on the Demon Core. This feels more like arrogant scientists believing the rules didn't apply to them, that particularly true for Daghlian, who was for example violating the very sensible rule that you don't work on this sort of thing alone (e.g. a coworker might have pointed out the danger of the experiment, or independently taken more effective action to stop it before fatal dosing happened, e.g. partly in the manner that Frisch saved himself, by knocking aside some of the reflecting blocks instead of Daghlian's attempt to remove the block he'd dropped). (See also the Los Alamos team of junior scientists who violated both direct orders and all common sense in trying to whip up their own smoke pots, resulting in as I recall one death and one blinding. I knew better than that when I created my own pyrotechnics in high school (granted, I'd been on the track to become a scientist since 1st grade, but...).) Seriously, Slotin should have either realized the danger if his hand slipped, or should have realized that his hand slipping was too great a risk for really no serious gain.

People knew in general far less about the effects of ionizing radiation at the time --- you could even say Slotin's death was one of the datapoints that lead to better understanding.

ufmace 10y ago
I just finished watching the TV series Manhattan, about the Manhattan project. It was supposedly written with help from historians and physicists who know their stuff. This reminded me of one of their plot points that seemed realistic - a character suffered a potentially dangerous exposure, and the base doctor, feeling out of his depth, tries to reach out to somebody who knows better. After a few hours of chasing bureaucracy and secrecy, he eventually discovers that the official expert is listed as himself! There really isn't anybody who has any idea how exposure affected people, and they're just pushing ahead anyways because it's wartime.

InclinedPlane 10y ago

To say that people were cavalier about the dangers of radiation back then would be a severe understatement.

hga 10y ago
They weren't that cavalier, else, for example, a lot more people working on the project, especially at the fissionable production plants, would have died from radiation exposure, instead, it was just these two working on the Demon Core. This feels more like arrogant scientists believing the rules didn't apply to them, that particularly true for Daghlian, who was for example violating the very sensible rule that you don't work on this sort of thing alone (e.g. a coworker might have pointed out the danger of the experiment, or independently taken more effective action to stop it before fatal dosing happened, e.g. partly in the manner that Frisch saved himself, by knocking aside some of the reflecting blocks instead of Daghlian's attempt to remove the block he'd dropped). (See also the Los Alamos team of junior scientists who violated both direct orders and all common sense in trying to whip up their own smoke pots, resulting in as I recall one death and one blinding. I knew better than that when I created my own pyrotechnics in high school (granted, I'd been on the track to become a scientist since 1st grade, but...).) Seriously, Slotin should have either realized the danger if his hand slipped, or should have realized that his hand slipping was too great a risk for really no serious gain.