Seniors, here’s a thesis idea: how to build an operable atomic bomb.

Although it was a junior term paper and not his senior thesis, John Aristotle Phillips ’78 did just that.

A less than lackluster student and Tiger mascot, the physics major came across the paper idea as he was trying to think of ways he could not fail out of his seminar about nuclear disarmament. Over the course of a few weeks, Phillips consulted only publicly available material, like physics textbooks and government releases.

He even figured a simplistic way around the hardest and most complex part of making an atomic bomb– the detonation trigger. The final result: a 40-page guide to building an atomic weapon “more sophisticated than the Hiroshima bomb”. A little scary isn’t it?