Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military - Reading Questions for a book excerpt

My students read a portion of the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" by Richard P. Feynman for an atomic and nuclear topics science class. This was offered to students in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 as an elective.

Included in this digital download are pdf files and word files of 8 discussion questions from the segments of the book entitled "Fizzled Fuses", "Testing Bloodhounds", and "Los Alamos from Below." Students should be finding phrases in the text to support their answers to these discussion questions (text dependent analysis).

We had been discussing the development of the atomic bomb and other nuclear projects during World War II. Students read the majority of Part 3 of the book, called Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military. This is about 37 pages in my 1985 paperback edition, spanning from pages 99 to 136. I chose to use only this segment of the book because we were reading from a number of other sources in this class. The sections I chose contained some of the more interesting aspects of Feynman’s involvement in the Manhattan Project.

These could be used as note taking or discussion questions in class. You could do segments of the book as read aloud in class.

English teachers may benefit from using this book as one of a few topics that students self-select for literacy circles. Truly, engineering and science classes wishing to explore some interesting but not often discussed topics might benefit from it, as well. Students in IB programs or AP programs would both enjoy it. If you haven't read this book, I can tell you that Feynman has a humor about him when conveying what happened during his time working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and with visits to Oak Ridge laboratories in Tennessee.