Psychology Today | 23.07.2026 00:35
It was May 1946 in a room at Los Alamos. On the table sat a sphere of plutonium, about fourteen pounds, roughly the size of a softball. Around it, in two halves, was a shell of beryllium, a metal that bounces neutrons back where they came from. Louis Slotin was lowering the top half of that shell into place, a screwdriver wedged under the rim to keep the two halves from fully closing. He'd done this same motion many times. He and the team aptly called it tickling the dragon's tail.
