This changes everything because it made the bomb entirely possible. As he does the calculation in his head he realizes that the amount would be much, much less, only 50 kilos. Heisenberg had believed without doing the calculation that the amount was somewhere near a metric ton. He tells Heisenberg to do the calculation to determine how much fissionable material (a "critical mass") would be necessary to sustain a chain reaction. In the climatic revisionist scene, instead of walking away from Heisenberg in the woods, Bohr contains his anger and confronts his one-time protégé. We must go to the "final draft" of their recapitulation of what happened-the "their" being the three of them, Heisenberg, Bohr and his wife Margrethe, who appear as ghosts of themselves in the now empty Bohr residence. And this is true: playwright Michael Frayn does not give a definitive answer to that intriguing question. (Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.) Most viewers of this extraordinary play believe that it doesn't answer the question of why Werner Heisenberg came to Copenhagen in 1941 to visit his mentor Niels Bohr.
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