Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Gun-type Nuclear weapon

Gun-type Nuclear weapon

I feel a little odd nominated something I made, but I am somewhat proud of this, I think it turned out well. My goal was to create an image which would illustrate the gun-type assembly method used in the Hiroshima bomb. In doing so I tried to pick an approach which to me would usefully illustrate the conceptual aspect of it, but also situate the technology within the frame of an real-life object (I personally feel that the physical reality of nuclear weapons is often lost in our focus on their abstract principles/fears). In this I admit I took some inspiration from an image in a 1960 Newsweek article, though the work is original. Used in nuclear weapon design and "Little Boy", created by me. --Fastfission 04:23, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Support - Fastfission 04:23, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Support, excellent work, informative and not stuffed with too much information. Don't feel hesitant to nominate your own work, a lot of great work on Wikipedia is just simply overlooked. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\^talk]] 09:03, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
Support. Good work. Janderk 12:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Support. Good explanatory diagram. - RedWordSmith 13:39, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
Support. Good diagrams are welcome. -- Solipsist 15:02, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Support. I usually don't like the proposed diagrams, but this one is simple and nice. --ScottyBoy900Q∞ 18:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Support. The simpler the better. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 21:12, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
Support. Well done -- Chris 73 Talk 04:13, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
Support. Nice work. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality/^talk]] 06:32, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
Abstain (I don't want to obstruct a generally great picture with my quibbles). Might I make a couple of suggestions? 1) it looks as if the slug and the target are of roughly the same size - wasn't the slug about 20% of the total critical mass - if that's the case, maybe making the target bigger (or slug smaller) would help. 2) the initiator isn't shown - unfortunately the perspective you've chosen might making drawing it in rather tricky 3) the perspective on the hole in the target is kinda wrong 4) the fuses aren't shown (wasn't there a barometric altimeter fuse and a radio-antenna trigger backup?) 5) it would be good if you could upload the source Illustrator document, if only to facilitate translation of the diagram into other languages. Heck, but don't listen to me, it's still super work. - John Fader
- I changed the size of the target in one of my little tweaks, but I don't think it matters all that much for the understanding of it. It is not meant to be technically accurate, hence the lack of the initator or the fuses or anything like that—the point was to explain the concept of the gun-type assembly, not to be an accurate technical depiction (or, rather, a guess of the technical depiction, which is all such drawings actually are, since the internal specifics have never been declassified) of the Little Boy weapon. I think that including that sort of detail would make it more difficult to understand than anything else; I'm aiming this at normal encyclopedia readers, not military buffs (though I have situated it in a casing, I think the thickness of the lines indicates that it is not a technical document). So, I'm just saying, I purposefully omitted such things and took certain artistic lincenses; I was going for something which conveys the gun-type assembly without a "two hemispheres launched towards each other" level of abstraction from reality, but also without the overbearing complication of unnecessary "accuracy" (which I am dubious about anyway, having interviewed some of the people who make the hyperrealistic diagrams). As some background, the reason I thought about drawing this was that I have been doing historical research into the creation of diagrams of nuclear weapons and thinking about the varieties of styles/tropes involved, I think this one is the best for conveying information while still grounding the concepts as actual objects. I'll upload the illustrator file to commons sometime next week when I get back in town if anybody wants to translate it into other languages. --Fastfission 23:30, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oppose. Good work, clear diagram, adds to wikipedia, but doesn't have that aesthetically stunning element that I think makes a picture featured-image quality. -Lommer 06:39, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Promoted, +9/-1. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\^talk]] 08:29, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)