by Macy Lynn Osborne-Frazier
If you watched or heard about the 2024 Oscars, you may know that the movie Oppenheimer received many awards and a large amount of public attention. The movie details the creation of the atomic bomb during WWII through a series of secret experiments and research called The Manhattan Project. Although J. Robert Oppenheimer’s story is well known, the scientific contributions made by workers at various facilities across the United States remain relatively overlooked. For instance, one of the most popular photos taken during The Manhattan Project is of a group of women called the Calutron Girls. Despite the image’s popularity, the Calutron Girls often remain a forgotten part of scientific history.
The Calutron Girls (image source)
The Calutron Girls were a group of mostly recent high school graduates employed to work on a secret task to aid the war efforts at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The women were taught how to operate machines called racetracks without ever being told the exact purpose of the machines. Although the women had no idea how important their work would become, they single-handedly produced a power source for one of the atomic bombs that largely contributed to the outcome of the war and made scientific history.
Schematic of Oak Ridge, TN where the Calutron Girls worked (image source)
The racetracks that the Calutron Girls operated were machines that separated different isotopes of uranium. Uranium is an element on the periodic table with an atomic number of 92. This means uranium has 92 protons, or positively charged particles, and 92 electrons, or negatively charged particles. All neutral elements have equal numbers of protons and electrons. However, the number of neutrons, or neutral particles, an element has can be different. Elements with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes. Different isotopes of the same element have different weights depending on how many neutrons are present. Uranium can have either 51 neutrons, called uranium-235, or 54 neutrons, called uranium-238. Although uranium-235 and uranium-238 are the same element, they have different properties due to the different numbers of neutrons present. The Calutron Girls worked at Oak Ridge to separate uranium-235 from uranium-238. The uranium-235 that the Calutron Girls isolated was then used to power the atomic bombs made during the war.
Uranium recovered from Oak Ridge (image source)
Physicists designed racetracks to separate isotopes of uranium. The machines used magnets and a special steam made up of protons and electrons to separate the isotopes into different receivers. The part of the racetrack that released steam was called the calutron, thus the nickname Calutron Girls. When calutrons were first invented, only PhD scientists worked on them because the inventors thought the machines were too complex for people without advanced degrees to understand. However, the Calutron Girls proved this thought wrong by operating the machines successfully with only high school diplomas.
Racetrack machine from Oak Ridge (image source)
The Calutron Girls are a perfect example of how science is for anybody. As young women without college degrees, the Calutron Girls single-handedly isolated enough uranium-235 to fuel one of the atomic bombs that helped end the war. These women had no idea how important their work was, but they contributed to a monumental effort in history and science. The Calutron Girls are proof that anybody regardless of gender, age, or education can be significant contributors to the field of science.
A Calutron Girl operating a racetrack machine (image source)
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