United States in World War

Uranium hexafluoride has a vapor pressure at 56°C equal to 765 torr, so UEs is a gas at 60°C and 1.000 atm. Various diffusion and thermal diffusion processes were used in the Manhattan Project of the United States in World War II to separate gaseous UEs molecules from UFg molecules. 

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, vol. 1, Population, chap. 8, p. 875 Higham, Strangers in the Land Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 208-9. David M. Kennedy discusses the United States in World War I more generally in Over Here The First World War and American Society. 

Between 1869 and the beginning of World War I, most of the world s supply of potassium salts came from the Stassfurt deposits in Germany. During World War I, U.S. production, measured as K2O, rose from 1000 metric tons in 1914 to 41,500 t in 1919. Following the end of World War I, U.S. production declined as imports increased. By the time the United States entered World War II, however, production had expanded enough to meet domestic needs. Since then, production has fluctuated, but has fallen below consumption as of the mid-1990s. Total annual U.S. demand peaked at 6.9 X 10 t in 1979 and has leveled off at approximately 5.1 to 5.5 million t. Canada is the principal potash exporter. 

The Society of Cosmetic Chemists, with individual memberships, was founded in the United States after World War II, based on the beHef that scientific expertise and exchange were the foundations for future expansion of the cosmetic industry. Prior to that time, knowledge of cosmetic formulation was jealously guarded. Related scientific societies emerged in other countries and have since joined to form the International Federation of Societies of Cosmetic Chemists. 

Harvesting. Except for the cotton gin, the introduction of the mechanical harvester has probably had a greater effect on cotton production than any other single event. Commercial mechanical harvesters were introduced into the United States after World War 11. By 1955, about 23% of the cotton was mechanically harvested. That value had increased to 85% by 1965. In the early 1990s more than 99% of the U.S. cotton crop was mechanically harvested, although cotton was stiH hand harvested in some other countries. 

Samuel P. Hays. From Conservation to Environment Environmental Politics in the United States since World War II. In Out of the Woods. Char Miller and Hal Rothman, eds. Pittsburgh, PA University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997, pp. 101-126. Source for Earth Day. 

Project-research, a method of organizing research by stipulation of projects and allocation of these to individuals or teams of scientists in separate laboratories, was developed in the United States during World War I in research on chemical warfare. This research was initially conducted largely by academic chemists as volunteers and later by them in the Research Division of the Chemical Warfare Service of the U. S. Army. Many of the leading American chemists in the 1920s shared the common experience of research on chemical warfare. The model of project-research was tried by the leaders of the division of chemistry and chemical technology of the National Research Council in order to allocate specific research problems and foster cooperative research after the war. 

The largest of the branch laboratories was established at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Its staff of about 75 carried out research on arsenic compounds and subsequently developed one of the new war gases produced by the United States during World War I, Lewisite C26). 

In the 1930s, more than 90 percent of the natural rubber used in the United States came from Malaysia. In the days after Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941 and the United States entered World War II, however, Japan captured Malaysia. As a result, the United States—the land with plenty of everything, except rubber—faced its first natural resource crisis. The military implications were devastating because without rubber for tires, military airplanes and jeeps were useless. Petroleum-based synthetic rubber had been developed in 1930 by DuPont chemist Wallace Carothers but was not widely used because it was much more expensive than natural rubber. With Malaysian rubber impossible to get and a war on, however, cost was no longer an issue. Synthetic rubber factories were constructed across the nation, and within a few years, the annual production of synthetic rubber rose from 2000 tons to about 800,000 tons. 

With the commercial rise of carboxymethylcellulose in the United States following World War II, analytical methods for its direct determination in various products, as well as for determination of the degree of substitution in various grades of carboxymethylcellulose, began to appear. 

By 1931 the first commercially successful rubber substitute, neoprene, was manufactured by DuPont. Among other rubber substitutes later developed in this country were butyl, Buna-N, and GR-S rubber made both from alcohol and from petroleum. Soon after the entry of the United States into World War II, our manufacture of synthetic rubber was stepped up to almost a millions tons a year. 

Nylon was first synthesized at DuPont by Wallace Carothers in the 1930s. After Japanese control of silk production in the South Pacific made silk unavailable to the United States during World War II, nylon was used to replace silk in the manufacture of parachutes. The synthesis and properties of nylon are discussed in Chapter 22. 

During his second year Don met, and in the following year married, Susan Marguerite Sims, later affectionately known to his students as Mamacita. A month after their marriage, the United States entered World War I, and Don enlisted in the Navy, where he served for three years. He graduated from Berkeley in 1923... 

Nuclear fission is a process in which the nucleus of an atom splits, usually into two pieces. This reaction was discovered when a target of uranium was bombarded by neutrons. Eission fragments were shown to fly apart with a large release of energy. The fission reaction was the basis of the atomic bomb, which was developed by the United States during World War II. After the war, controlled energy release from fission was applied to the development of nuclear reactors. Reactors are utilized for production of electricity at nuclear power plants, for propulsion of ships and submarines, and for the creation of radioactive isotopes used in medicine and industry. 

In 1917, after the United States entered World War I, Anslinger became an ordinance officer in the War Department supervising government contracts. Unhappy with this domestic duty, he applied to the State Department for overseas assignment and was sent to Holland as attache in the American legation. 

When the United States entered World War II (1941) and was faced with limited supplies of quinine, there developed a need for a better understanding of the malarial parasite and to discover new anti-malarials in order to protect United States troops in Southeast Asia, North America and the Pacific. The Office of Scientific Research and Development, created a Board for the Coordination of Malaria Studies to develop a large-scale pharmacological research program. Of the thousands of compounds synthesized and screened only a few emerged, the most important of these was chloroquine, a 4-aminoquinoline. However, despite this success, at the end of World War II the Board was dissolved and with it funding for malaria biochemistry disappeared. 

In the United States during World War I (1914—1918), the largest industrial products market for soybean oil was the soap industry. Lesser amounts were used in paint, varnish, enamel, linoleum, oilcloth, asphalt, and other waterproofing materials. 

Experiments with Pu confirmed theoretical predictions that it would exhibit high fissibility with both thermal and fast neutrons. This meant that Pu in sufficient quantity would also experience an instantaneous nuclear explosion like If controlled nuclear fission could be accomplished in a nuclear reactor, it would be possible to produce large amounts of plutonium by neutron bombardment of U. The Pu could be isolated by chemical methods which were expected to be simpler than the isotopic separation required to obtain pure As a consequence, the production of Pu became a major project of the atomic bomb program of the United States during World War II see further Ch. 19. 

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