physics

Project Gasbuggy

Project Gasbuggy is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Project Gasbuggy rather than just read about it. In short: Project Gasbuggy was an underground nuclear detonation carried out by the United States Atomic Energy Commission on December 10, 1967 in rural northwestern New Mexico. It was part of Operation Plowshare, a program designed to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosions.

Key takeaways

Project Gasbuggy belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Project Gasbuggy to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Project Gasbuggy from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Project Gasbuggy was an underground nuclear detonation carried out by the United States Atomic Energy Commission on December 10, 1967 in rural northwestern New Mexico. It was part of Operation Plowshare, a program designed to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosions. Gasbuggy was carried out by the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory and the El Paso Natural Gas Company, with funding from the Atomic Energy Commission. Its purpose was to determine if nuclear explosions could be useful in fracturing rock formations for natural gas extraction. The site, lying in the Carson National Forest, is approximately 21 miles (34 km) southwest of Dulce, New Mexico and 54 miles (87 km) east of Farmington, and was chosen because natural gas deposits were known to be held in sandstone beneath Leandro Canyon. A 29-kiloton-of-TNT (120 TJ) device was placed at a depth of 4,227 feet (1,288 m) underground, then the well was backfilled before the device was detonated; a crowd had gathered to watch the detonation from atop a nearby butte. The detonation took place after a couple of delays, the last one caused by a breakdown of the explosive refrigeration system. The detonation produced a rubble chimney that was 80 feet (24 m) wide and 335 feet (102 m) high above the blast center. After an initial surface cleanup effort the site sat idle for over a decade. A later surface cleanup effort primarily tackled leftover toxic materials. In 1978, a marker monument was installed at the Surface Ground Zero (SGZ) point that provided basic explanation of the historic test. Below the main plaque lies another which indicates that no drilling or digging is allowed without government permission. The site is publicly accessible via the Carson National Forest, F.S. 357 dirt road/Indian J10 that leads into the Carson National Forest. Following the Project Gasbuggy test, two subsequent nuclear explosion fracturing experiments were conducted in western Colorado in an effort to refine the technique: Project Rulison in 1969 and Project Rio Blanco in 1973. In both cases the gas radioactivity was still seen as too high and in Project Rio Blanco the triple-blast rubble chimney structures disappointed the design engineers. Soon after that test the approximately 15-year Project Plowshare program funding dried up.

In 2011, the United States Department of Energy reported that even after 25 years of gas production of all the natural gas deemed recoverable, only 15 to 40 percent of the investment could be recovered. These early fracturing tests were later superseded by hydraulic fracturing technologies.

Gallery

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Project Gasbuggy

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Project Gasbuggy claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Project Gasbuggy before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Project Gasbuggy ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Project Gasbuggy

In research: Project Gasbuggy appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Project Gasbuggy in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Project Gasbuggy is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1967 explosions, 1967 in New Mexico, 1967 in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Project Gasbuggy outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Project Gasbuggy in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Project Gasbuggy means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Project Gasbuggy out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Project Gasbuggy in simple terms?

Why does Project Gasbuggy matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Project Gasbuggy?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Project Gasbuggy.