Talk:Metallurgical Laboratory

Columbia College

Wasn't the reactor at Columbia College, south of Chicago? I had heard that it was a full melt-down. It should have reached the center of the Earth, by now; eating its way through matter.216.215.40.65 (talk) 01:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Raquets court

The space under the bleachers was a racquets (sport) court, not a squash (sport) court, altough it is often referenced as being a squash court. James Zug in his authoritative book Squash: A History of the Game (ISBN 0743229908) sets the record straight on this. Racquets, then as now, is a very obscure sport, which probably explains the confusion in the initial reports—together with the fact that at the time squash was called squash racquets. An American squash court is only 18.5 x 32 feet (592 ft²). A racquets court is 30 x 60 feet (1800 ft²) with a higher ceiling—a much more realistic space for such an experiment. — Eoghanacht ^talk 28 May 2005 (UTC)

What is the Metallurgical Project

This article mentions the Metallurgical Project five times but never explains it. What is it? --2600:380:5557:1883:8875:A0E6:CEAF:F4C0 (talk) 22:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Added an explanation. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:22, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Can you say what the Metallurgical Laboratory is in the first sentence of the first paragraph? What I get is that it was the code name for some part of the Manhattan Project, it was part of the Metallurgical Project, and the Metallurgical Project was headed by a Nobel Laureate, and the Metallurgical Project's objective was to create a bomb, and the Metallurgical Laboratory produced a chain reaction, and part of its (the Laboratory's) mission was to isolate plutonium. But what is the Metallurgical Laboratory? I would rather get detailed information about the Metallurgical Project from its own article.

There is so much detailed information about the Metallurgical Project that it seems that is the topic rather than the Metallurgical Laboratory while the opening paragraph seems to give no primary information about what the Metallurgical Laboratory is. Is it a project, a school, a space, a group of scientists? Cell phones open with just this paragraph. Maybe the second paragraph could contain the detailed information about the Metallurgical Project after establishing what the Metallurgical Laboratory is. 2600:380:5678:EC67:A196:ADD3:3C0C:797E (talk) 04:17, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Questions

I have a couple of issues, things wondered about, so maybe someone can enlighten me. I ran across the "featured article" Chicago Pile-1 so decided to check out Chicago Pile-2. This dumped me back (redirected) to Chicago Pile-1#Later operation. I checked out Chicago Pile-3 (stub-class), that led to Experimental Breeder Reactor I (Chicago Pile-4), and Chicago Pile-5 through the "See also" section. It seems a better connection could be established.

This featured article gave me a few pauses. When I read it I first noticed some confusion. It went from the "Reactor development" section and the subsections of Chicago Pile-1, Pile-2, and Pile-3, before getting into the "Production piles" subsection. That seems strange as it would appear this would be at the beginning since it discusses elements regarding the building of the "Piles". Maybe I am just not getting it but I would think construction concepts (say, homogeneous versus heterogeneous) would be placed ahead of construction details of "Piles".

I suppose my main concern is a disconnect between these initial "Piles" and the tying in of related articles. It seems this article is the "parent article", at least concerning the elements that sprung from it, as presented by "main article" in the "Chicago" subsection of Manhattan Project.

The sixth paragraph of Nuclear reactor touches on Chicago Pile-1 then the seventh paragraph drops in the Manhattan Project which can also be found in the Nuclear fission history subsection.

Anyway, from a readers point of view (not an "expert") it could be a little better presented. Otr500 (talk) 14:47, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what your question is about the -5 piles. But -1/2 and -3 were designed/built by the Met Lab, while -4 and -5, by Argonne National Laboratory. Although there is considerable overlap between the two: the Met Lab was a UChicago laboratory that did government contract work, Argonne is the primary successor to the Met Lab but it is a government lab, generally run by UChicago. At any rate Hawkeye7 did the work on this article perhaps he can help you. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:23, 3 February 2020 (UTC)