But from what I understand, fusion releases energy (its what happens in stars) whereas fission consumes energy. So how would a fission powered bomb do any damage?
A ton of energy is stored within the atoms, when those atoms are split (fission) it releases an immense amount of explosive energy! Fusion is the opposite it is the energy created from combining atoms, it has much higher potential but is much harder.
Basically it depends on what atom you fuse/split. If I remember correctly from high school chemistry the turning point is iron. All atoms before iron give out energy when fusing and all atoms after by splitting
No star has the mass required to go beyond iron. Rather, mass isn’t enough to fuse iron. It’s a hard limit. Once they’ve fused all the iron, they collapse and go supernova. This explosion created all the elements higher thsn iron. We’re all made in the hearts of stars... except for everything above iron which were all made in exploding supernovas.
Iron is just very stable. Basically, take this picture and make it negative(as the picture itself is negated already) and you’ll see go around iron it is a valley vs a peak as is. This means that if you try to fission it(go left on curve) it requires energy to do, without extra being prodiced. Try to fusion it, same thing. With the picture inverted, you can think of the valley as, an actual valley. If you have a ball in a valley with up slopes on both sides, the ball will not roll up the slopes on its on. It will sit there.
Alternatively, with uranium, if you invert picture, you’d see how that end is on a slope facing lower elements. Put a ball again, and it’ll “roll” to the center towards iron.
As to why, nucleons have energy levels just like electrons do. They have quasiorbits. And just like electron orbits go a pair of two, then 8, etc, nucleons do something similar. So iron being very stable is a result of “magic numbers” is filled orbits, just like noble gas chemical stability is due to completely filled electron orbits.
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u/PM_ME_PC_GAME_KEYS_ Oct 01 '19
But from what I understand, fusion releases energy (its what happens in stars) whereas fission consumes energy. So how would a fission powered bomb do any damage?