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The Construction and Analysis of a Science Story: A Proposed Methodology

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Abstract

Science educators are beginning to establish a theoretical and methodological foundation for constructing and using stories in science teaching. At the same time, it is not clear to what degree science stories that have recently been written adhere to the guidelines that are being proposed. The author has written a story about Louis Slotin, which deals with the beginnings of radiation protection, to serve as a case study. In this paper, the story is dissected and evaluated with the view to begin to establish a method of literary criticism for science stories. In addition, student responses to the story are investigated and interpreted.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a five-year grant from NSERC’s CRYSTAL program at the University of Manitoba and funding from the Maurice Price Foundation. Thanks are due to Sarah Dietrich for transcribing the data and to Vince Bagnulo for participating in the data analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3B 2E9

    Stephen Klassen

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  1. Stephen Klassen
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Correspondence to Stephen Klassen.

Appendices

Appendix I: Story “The Dragon’s Revenge”

It was a typically sunny spring morning in 1946 as Louis Slotin hurried towards the institutionally drab laboratory building. Lou chuckled wryly to himself. Life had turned out rather differently for him, having grown up in Winnipeg, graduating from the University of Manitoba as a chemist, and now known as a physicist working in Los Alamos on the A-bomb! A sobering thought crossed his mind, like it did frequently. Was he right in his belief that the restoration of world peace had depended on Manhattan project research? But his thoughts were interrupted as he strode up to the top-secret Pajarito lab housing the bomb criticality tests. He recalled crossing paths with Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi here a while back. What Professor Fermi said to him then kept coming back to his mind like a recording—”You won’t last a year if you keep doing that experiment.” “That Experiment” was testing the assembly of the plutonium bomb core with its beryllium shell. The procedure had been dubbed, ominously, as “tickling the dragon’s tail.”

The day passed quickly for Lou as it will for someone obsessed with his work. It was now past 3:00 in the afternoon and Lou was ready to demonstrate the testing of the bomb core to Alvin Graves, who was to take his place on the project. Six observers were looking on from a distance. Grabbing the hemispherical beryllium shell by the thumb–hole on the top, Lou carefully lowered the top half onto the bottom half covering the plutonium core, holding them apart with a screwdriver. Lou had mastered the technique of making the shell come as close to the core as possible without becoming super critical and emitting a lethal dose of radiation. It was necessary to test the bomb cores in this way to insure that they functioned correctly. As he rotated the screwdriver slightly this way and that, the shell moved up and down. From across the room the familiar crunching sound of the Geiger counters swelled and ebbed. Then it happened. No one knows what broke Lou’s concentration, but something did. The screwdriver slipped and clattered to the floor and a blue flash filled the room as the top shell touched the bottom, releasing an unimaginable torrent of neutrons and gamma-rays. Time seemed to come to a screeching halt. Almost instinctively, Lou, using his hands, grabbed the lethal assembly and flipped the bomb–shell off the table and onto the floor with what seemed a deafening crash. “Well, that does it—I’m dead!” Lou heard himself say. “Tell me this is a nightmare,” he thought. But it wasn’t.

Dr. Louis Slotin had been exposed to 21 Sieverts of radiation in an instant as the bomb became supercritical when the top half came completely in contact with the bottom. His quick reaction may have saved the lives of everyone else in the room that day, May 21, 1946. However, Dr. Slotin died an excruciating death from extreme radiation exposure on May 30. Slotin’s close friend, Dr. Philip Morrison, sat with him night and day as his organs shut down one by one and gangrene set in. Everyone considered Dr. Slotin a hero. The local newspaper in Los Alamos published a tribute written by associate editor Thomas P. Ashlock, which began,

May God receive you, great-souled scientist!

While you were with us, even strangers knew

The breadth and lofty stature of your mind

‘Twas only in the crucible of death

We saw at last your noble heart revealed.

What a tragedy! If the science of radiation protection had been sufficiently developed by

1946, then this story would likely never have taken place.

Appendix II: Student Assignment

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Klassen, S. The Construction and Analysis of a Science Story: A Proposed Methodology. Sci & Educ 18, 401–423 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-008-9141-y

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