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syphilis
at Tuskegee, birth control, emergency care, and plastic surgery. One student
was even brave enough to tackle the history of medicine and civilization.
Transportation
projects included bridges, canals, roads, planes, helicopters, railroads,
tunnels, cars, and streetcars. More specifically students examined the
historical significance of the Tappen Zee Bridge, Takoma Narrows Bridge,
Erie Canal, Panama Canal, Wright brothers, good roads movement in Illinois,
and railroad technology and the adoption of standard time zones. One student
produced a documentary on the Stanley Steamer, which concentrated on the
history of its development
and
its popularity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She obtained
documentation from the Stanley Steamer museum in Kingfield, ME, talked
to descendants of the Stanley brothers and restorers, and even drove one
of the cars.
Atomic
and nuclear energy topics concerned mostly the development of the atomic
bomb. One student looked at the impact of the bomb on the war itself and
later cold war developments, but her main emphasis lay on the moral dilemma
for Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project. A Maryland
student from Calvert County produced an impressive documentary about Enrico
Fermi who supervised a series of experiments that culminated in construction
of the CP-1 Pile, the
first
controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. This momentous event
took place in a squash court under the west stands of Stagg Field
at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942. The only visual depiction
of this successful experiment exists on a painting. The |
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