Arthur Compton's 1941 Analysis of Explosive Fission in U-235: The Physics

In November 1941 Arthur Compton prepared a report for Vannevar Bush regarding the possibility of explosive fission of U-235. This remarkable report, arguably the parent document of the Los Alamos Primer, presented detailed estimates for the critical mass, expected energy release, efficiency, destructive effects and probable cost of such a weapon. This paper will examine the physics behind Compton's estimates for the critical mass and efficiency of a fission weapon and compare his results to those derived from present-day cross-sections and secondary-neutron numbers. His approach to the efficiency calculation is found to be particularly interesting in that it utilizes some very basic undergraduate physics.