What if you’ve spent your entire life in the shadows?
Hi, everyone-
The last time someone made fun of my haircut, I was probably four.
For one braided girl, it was likely around the same time. And then when she got to travel the world as an adult, I’m not sure if the jokes ever went away. She went to Germany, America, and France. And I can guarantee you, in each of these countries, it must not have been free from ridicule.
Maybe it was the two jet-black pigtail braids she always carried down her shoulders. Maybe it was the thick accent. Maybe it was the small eyes. Maybe it was that, at first, she was awkward as hell.
But that’s the thing about making fun of someone with ballistic potential. It only fuels them to fight back.
This could be the reason why, from a young age, this girl had always been interested in physics. Because:
She wanted to reverse the social physics—where the small … always loses.
With nuclear fission—where an invisibly small neutron slams into a larger atom—what’s already small splits into even smaller atoms and releases lethal amounts of energy.
It only took all of her life to get good—really good—at this. So good that, when she came of age, she didn’t hesitate continuing.
What she didn’t realize, though, was that there’s another science that she was studying at the same time without knowing: natural attraction.
It all started in school.
Her classmates consisted mostly of boys. Back then, women in science wasn’t really a thing. So imagine feeling outnumbered out there in a world that always makes fun of you. And then going to the one place of study where you would feel at home.
Except there, you look around. And again: you’re still outnumbered.
But then her eyes must’ve caught something: one bright-eyed boy whose eyes also met hers. Saying thousands without ever saying a word.
And you know how that goes when you are young.
Sneaking a look to see if they’re looking. And when they turned to look at you, you turned away. Both terrified and glad that they looked back. Something like that was enough to carry you through the entire week.
For the braided girl and that one boy, it carried them for years. Into adulthood. Into many years of studies of nuclear physics. Into multiple intelligent scientific discourse on:
What makes small, invisible things slam into one another.
What makes them excite and break into two smaller entities.
And what exactly is it that makes this reaction turn into big energy that kills.
Both the girl and the boy knew the textbook answer to all this.
But about matters of the heart and soul, they knew a little less.
Because when he was finally asked by the government to build an atomic bomb: