Christy pit

noun

An early design of pit (core of an implosion-type nuclear weapon), used in the detonation over Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945.

“The principal insight behind the Christy pit was that a solid, subcritical core of plutonium could be compressed to criticality.”

Ask AI about this wordChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

Meanings

nounChristy pit (plural Christy pits)

plural Christy pits

  1. An early design of pit (core of an implosion-type nuclear weapon), used in the detonation over Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945.

    The principal insight behind the Christy pit was that a solid, subcritical core of plutonium could be compressed to criticality.

    1 more example

    2017, Demon core, entry in Benjamin C. Garrett, Historical Dictionary of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare, Bowman & Littlefield, 2nd Edition, page 90, Nickname given to the Christy pit because of its association with two fatalities during hands-on Dragon Experiments; it replaced “Rufus,” an earlier nickname. The Christy pit, a solid sphere of plutonium-239, was initially fabricated as two hemispheres of an alloy of plutonium and gallium.

Origin

Named after Canadian-American physicist Robert F. Christy, who worked on the Manhattan Project to produce the first nuclear weapons.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

Christy pit. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Christy%20pit

MLA

“Christy pit.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Christy%20pit. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Christy pit,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Christy%20pit.

Source: Christy pit on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.