My explorations began in 1959, initially, teaching high school physics students how to protect themselves in the event of nuclear "exchanges" with the Soviet Union. (You were out of luck if did not enroll in physics.) Later, this venture continued whenever my physics students at Illinois Wesleyan University encountered nuclear phenomena. When the United States initiated the world's first nuclear war over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and at Trinity, they created the largest releases of energy ever produced by man on this planet. Those were small and primitive nuclear bombs; today the average weapon is "some" 10-times more powerful. Some of the world's bombs release more than 1000 times the energy of those first primitive "gadgets."
