You may have heard there are a couple of big movies coming to theaters this weekend: Barbie and Oppenheimer. Read up more on these two world-changers before you see the movies!
Barbie
Barbara Millicent Roberts (Barbie) was released in 1959 and invented by Ruth Handler. You can read about Handler in Patently Female: from AZT to TV dinners. (Check out our Untold Stories in STEM collection for more inventions by women, people of color, and other historically underrepresented groups in STEM).
One of the most strongest parts of the Barbie brand is Mattel’s management of their intellectual property. Learn about patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property in our Patents LibGuide. The Lichtenberger Engineering Library is a Patent and Trademark Resource Center! Keep an eye out on our social media channels so you know when our next intellectual property workshop is coming up.
Back to the technical side of things, Barbies are created using a process called rotational molding. If you want to read about that and other plastics, check out Plastics: materials and processing.
If you’d like to look at some pretty Barbie dresses (who doesn’t?) you can check out Barbie: what a doll! from our friends over at the Art Library. We can even have it brought over to the Engineering Library for you to pick up using Interlibrary Loan.
Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer the film primarily focuses on his time working on the Manhattan Project, also known as the project to build the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project gives the reader an inside look at the project, using writings from the people who worked on it.
The discoveries of the Atomic Age also had a far-reaching cultural impact. Read more in The Age of Radiance.
We’ll finish things off with a couple of Oppenheimer biographies. Learn about Oppenheimer’s professional relationships in Einstein and Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer lived 21 years after the Trinity Test. Read about the rest of his life in A Life in Twilight: the final years of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Which movie are you going to see first?