How I see it. My Reaction Paper

When I took my trip to the book store to collect the books needed for my English class, the woman helping me handed me a book called “The Curve of Binding Energy”. Science equations flashed through my head and I asked her if she had handed me the wrong book, because I already picked up all of my science books. I was upset when she told me she wasn’t wrong, and it was a required book for the class. To me science is the least interesting subject out there and the fact that I had to read 300 long pages of it killed me. Just what did “The Curve of Binding Energy” have to do with my English class anyway? When the assignment was given to us to read the book over our spring break I wasn’t the happiest person in the world, but I sucked it up and began to read. Surprisingly, I became interested very quickly.The story was about a man named Theodore B. Taylor who was one of the most ingenious engineers of his time. He was technically a physicist, but ended up working at Los Alamos as a nuclear bomb designer due to failing out of Berkley in the Ph.D program. Failing out of the program in his school could have been the best thing that could have happened to Taylor, being that he began a revolution. The book continues the story of Taylor’s life and all that had to do with science. Taylor goes about warning us of just how easy it is to get the common ingredients needed to create a nuclear bomb. Plutonium is an unavoidable byproduct of a nuclear device. Once you have this ingredient, it is very simple to create an atomic bomb. I was wondering as I was reading, why was Taylor telling McPhee any information that had to do with creating a bomb? But I soon came to realize that Taylor wasn’t giving up much information at all, only things that could be found anywhere. He actually made sure to reveal just enough, but not too much information. This is something that kept me interested because I felt like I knew a small piece of a big secret that couldn’t be let out to the world. Being that Taylor was so cautious about his choice of words used in the book through interviews and other sources, we can lead on to my next subject of interest which is safeguards. This is a topic that is brought up many times in the book; how lenient the safeguard system can be with nuclear materials. This was a huge concern for Taylor. He did not care about the nuclear bombs, but the sake of the people and the worry that millions would one day get hurt because the formula would fall into the hands of the wrong person. Since Taylor’s time safeguards have definitely increased and become more efficient. I can’t believe that the fact that Uranium and Plutonium were so easy to get in that time, when people knew about its dangers. With all the fighting that Taylor did to make it well aware that safeguards are very important, I am certain that he was more then pleased when McPhee wanted to write a book about him. It was a great way to spread the word about this problem and to open the government’s eyes. Since the book was published in 1973, the government has taken many precautions in making it almost impossible for the wrong person to get their hands on these things. This makes me feel somewhat safe because in today’s day in age, security is at an all time high. What is very ironic is the fact that Taylor mentions that the World Trade Center is an easy target for these terrorist. This is a reference that was made way before the striking of the September 11th attacks. Who is to tell if the terrorists quite possibly got their idea of where to attack from this very book? I personally do not think that it was a mere coincidence, you never know, it just might be where these terrorist got the “perfect” location from. McPhee put into context everything that Taylor ever worked for. All of this information that Taylor ever wanted people to know about was published and being sold all around the country. Not only did “The Curve of Binding Energy” tell the story of a remarkably intelligent person’s life, but it also opened the eyes of the people who needed it most. The fact that people’s welfare was in danger because of something that was pushed to the side was soon a controversial topic that has had mass improvement since the publishing of this book.