The possibility for new discoveries is endless. With each new discovery, along seems to come another new discovery or invention. The Industrial Revolution kick started a long line of scientific and technological achievements. Of these achievements were weaponry, such as machine guns, which increased the intensity as well as the casualties of war, through the World Wars. But the results found from these weapons are nothing compared to the weapon that ended World War II. .
After the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick, scientists vigorously experimented to find chemical reactions that could be made with this "new" particle. The outcome of these experiments was the chemical reaction fission and the chemical reaction fusion (The Nuclear Weapon Archive: A Guide to Nuclear Weapons). Fission is the division of an atomic nucleus releasing a mass amount of energy, whereas fusion is the combination of atomic nuclei while simultaneously releasing a mass amount of energy (dictionary.com). Scientists continued experimenting with these reactions until they knew enough about the actual processes and variables required to control the outcome as they pleased. .
Using the concept for fission and the information collected by other scientists, Leo Szilard conceived the idea of the atomic bomb. Although it was Szilard who created and patented the idea of the atomic bomb, there were suspicions of both Germany and Japan creating a similar bomb; this lead to the Manhattan Project (The Nuclear Weapon Archive: A Guide to Nuclear Weapons). This was the United Sates" effort to build an atomic weapon before any other country. It was under the leadership of Enrico Fermi that one of the teams of scientists found the key to creating a nuclear chain reaction [plutonium]. On July 16th, 1945, at the Alamogordo [a remote desert in New Mexico], Manhattan Project scientists set off the first atomic bomb, not only leaving fear in the opposing countries who had tried to make the first atomic bomb, but in some of the scientists who contributed to the creation of this bomb, who expected that the use of the bomb would lead to an arms race (World History: The Modern Era).