Lawrence, accompanied by his new liaison, was introduced to the Manhattan Project by Robert Oppenheimer. During the tour, they entered a room where Oppenheimer demonstrated an experiment by dropping marbles into an aquarium bowl, which was met with applause from his team:
Why did they applaud in this scene?
This follows on from a previous scene, with the bowl representing how much uranium they need to make a workable bomb.
SERBER (CONT’D): Here’s the amount of uranium Oak Ridge refined all of last month.
Serber drops THREE MARBLES into the bowl. The scientists stare at the almost-empty goldfish bowl.
We see the bowl filling up slowly, then we get to the next scene with Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer theatrically drops three marbles into the quarterfull goldfish bowl, then ADDS TWO MORE - the room APPLAUDS. Oppenheimer BOWS, steps down. Lawrence BOUNCES up
Clearly Oak Ridge have nearly doubled their production and the assembled scientists consider this worthy of applause for their efforts.
