In 1945 , the Los Alamos Laboratory carried out the Trinity nuclear test at a remote site near Alamogordo , New Mexico . Sands worked with Walker on a piezoelectric pressure measurement of the atmospheric shock wave produced by " the gadget " , a prototype of the Fat Man weapon later dropped on Nagasaki . Their instrumentation worked well during a test explosion of 108 tons of TNT in May 1945 , but no information was obtained during the Trinity test on July 16 , 1945 , because an unexpected rain shower the night before soaked the apparatus
Trinity nuclear test
Trinity (nuclear test)
Matthew Sands