Especially in terms of the Tsar Bomber – a relatively large weapon – which caused the biggest nuclear explosion ever. If nukes deal with atom sized particles, why does a bigger sized weapon = bigger explosion?
Unsure if correct flair but when dealing with nuclear weapons a few could apply
In: Engineering
Just to try to add a real ELi5 answer here:
The “explosive” material of the bomb (ie, the plutonium) is only a small part of the size of the overall bomb. The rest of the bomb is a complicated mechanism designed to get the plutonium to explode.
The amount of plutonium does matter, because you still need a lot of “atom sized particles” to make a big explosion, but it’s not what accounts for most of the bomb’s size.
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