Question

in 1942, physicist leona woods was the only woman and the youngest person on enrico fermis team when it achieved the worlds first self - sustaining chain reaction in a graphite and uranium pile known as cp - 1 under the west grandstand at the university of chicagos stagg field. one year later, j. robert oppenheimer appointed charlotte serber as head of the los alamos national laboratory library, a critical position controlling the distribution of classified and unclassified reports. she was the only female division leader at the lab. theoretical physicist maria goeppert - mayer served as a manhattan project research scientist at columbia university and los alamos. she was awarded the nobel prize in physics in 1963.
scientists only composed a small fraction of the men and women that worked on the manhattan project. once the army took over in 1942, the development of the atomic bomb became primarily an engineering and industrial program. the womens army corps was deployed at all major sites, working on a variety of tasks including the handling of highly classified documents. despite the initial skepticism of male scientists, young women, most of them recent graduates of east tennessee high schools, operated the control panels at the oak ridge y - 12 facility using the electromagnetic separation method to produce enriched uranium.1
women in the energy workplace
after wwii, women continued to make slow but steady progress in stem - related occupations. microbiologist and radcliffe college president mary
what does the phrase \self - sustaining\ mean in paragraph 2?
a the ability to maintain itself without help from outside sources
b the ability of women to advance without help from men
c the ability to stop itself automatically without relying on additional aid
d the ability of men to adjust to diverse workplaces by including women

Explanation:

The phrase "self - sustaining" generally means the ability to maintain oneself without external help. In the context of a chain reaction (a scientific process), it refers to the reaction being able to keep going on its own without constant input from outside sources. Option A matches this general and contextual meaning. Option B is too specific to women's advancement (not related to the scientific chain - reaction context). Option C's "stop itself" is the opposite of what a self - sustaining chain reaction would do (a chain reaction is about continuing, not stopping). Option D is about men adjusting to workplaces (not relevant to the scientific term's meaning).

Answer:

A. the ability to maintain itself without help from outside sources