How do they differ in their material makeup, efficiency, scope, scale and destructive power?
In: Chemistry
Both atomic and hydrogen bombs are nuclear weapons.
An **atomic weapon** uses nuclear *fission.* Fission is when you break a single atom apart; this action releases a great deal of energy. There are certain kinds of atoms, like uranium and plutonium, which are relatively easy to break apart, and when we pack them together and set off a fissile reaction, they all explode at once. The same process is used in creating peaceful nuclear power, but in a much more controlled setting. The bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were atomic weapons.
A **hydrogen weapon** is also called a “thermonuclear weapon” and instead uses nuclear *fusion,* which is when you smoosh two atoms (usually hydrogen) together to make a bigger atom. This action releases way more energy than fission. Fusion is what the Sun has been doing for billions of years…when we detonate a hydrogen bomb, we are momentarily creating a star. Fusion requires such a great deal of energy to kick off that hydrogen bombs *have an atomic bomb inside them as a trigger.* That should give you the idea of the difference between the two…an H-bomb can be hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than an A-bomb, and much more efficient in terms of how much of the material is used up. Hydrogen weapons have never been used in war, but they make up most of today’s nuclear arsenal.
Atomic and nuclear bombs are the same word.
Hydrogen bombs are a subtype of atomic bomb where you don’t just use fission as your energy source, but use that fission to cause hydrogen to fuse at once, which releases much more energy than fission of uranium or plutonium on its own does, as well as not leaving any radioactive isotopes behind.
But since all hydrogen bombs require a prior fission stage, they can’t be totally ‘clean’ just much less radioactive pollution than a regular only fission bomb per size of explosion.
ok, so “atomic” and “nuclear” are basically interchangeable layman’s terms. Hydrogen bombs are a type of nuclear bomb, specifically a fusion bomb.
their are two broad types of nuclear bomb, fission and fusion.
Fission type bombs are the original type created by the Manhattan Project in ww2. they work by “splitting the atom”, taking a large, unstable nucleus like Uranium or Plutonium, and then setting up a chain reaction of those atoms falling apart in a process that lets off a LOT of energy. these are the type used on Hiroshima, but can also be much smaller or bigger depending on the design.
Fusion type weapons work by fusing a small, light element, normally Hydrogen, together into bigger elements, which ALSO releases a lot of energy. The conditions required to make this are pretty extreme, and the normal method of getting them is by *detonating a fission type bomb* to create the energy needed to force the atoms to fuse. all the really powerful bombs are of this type.
that ok as a starter for 10?
Atomic and nuclear bomb are just different terms for the same thing. They refer to any bomb that uses nuclear reactions, either fusion or fission, to produce an explosion. Fission bombs take large atoms and split them apart to release energy, fusion bombs take small atoms and fuse them together to release energy.
A hydrogen bomb is a form of fusion bomb (and AFAIK the only kind we’ve ever made so far). It takes two types of hydrogen which, under very high heat and pressure, will fuse together into helium. The energy that holds two separate hydrogen atoms together is greater than the energy that holds one helium atom together, and the excess energy makes the explosion.
There are many designs, but in general:
A fission bomb will have some very large and unstable atom such as uranium 235 and shoot neutrons at it at high speed. When a neutron hit one of the U235 atoms, it will break apart into 2 smaller atoms, which also releases a bunch of energy, and most importantly, some extra neutrons which will go on to hit other U235 atoms. Get enough of these together and you get a chain reaction that releases a ton of energy.
Fusion bombs are more powerful, but the heat and pressure required to start the hydrogen atoms fusing together is so great that they actually use a small fission bomb to get the required energy to create fusion. Once it starts going, you can get *far* more energy than with a fission reaction, even with a smaller amount of starting material.
Nuclear bomb is a catch-all term for two types of weapons, fission-type bombs and fusion-type bombs. Atomic bomb is also a catch-all term, but because the fission-type bombs came first, “atomic bomb” often in context refers specifically to fission bombs. Fusion bombs use hydrogen, and are called “hydrogen bombs” or “thermonuclear bombs.” Whether they are fission or fusion bombs, their explosive output is usually described in kilotons, meaning, the equivalent of a certain number of thousands of tons of TNT.
At the level of atoms, you can generate a huge amount of energy — either in a bomb, or in a controlled form in a power plant — both by splitting atoms apart as well as fusing them together. To split them apart (“fission”), it’s best to start with very heavy elements that have large nuclei, like uranium or plutonium. These are the type of bombs that were dropped at the end of the Second World War. The bombs dropped on Japan had a yield of about 15-20 kilotons, but the largest fission bombs could be up to several hundred kilotons (so several hundred thousand tons of TNT).
Hydrogen bombs or thermonuclear bombs ultimately rely on the energy released by fusing atoms together. To do this, it’s easiest to start at the other end of the periodic table, with very light atoms — hydrogen (hence, the name “hydrogen bombs”). The story then gets a bit complicated, because you have to apply an incredible amount of energy to fuse the atoms together in the first place, *before* you get to the even bigger release caused by that fusion. So, typically, a “hydrogen bomb” actually has a first-stage fission bomb inside it, which produces the energy necessary to trigger the second stage, which is where the hydrogen fusion comes in. These weapons are far more powerful than the fission-only bombs. The largest ever detonated was the Soviet “tsar bomb” test, which was 50 megatons (50 million tons of TNT).
Although you can build hydrogen bombs as big as you could possibly want to, the nuclear yields have not continued to grow. This is because there really are no militarily useful targets massive enough that you would really need a multi-megaton bomb to destroy it. Once the accuracy of rocket targeting was good enough that both sides were confident they could actually hit the targets they wanted to hit, they stopped increasing the yield. Even so, a modern nuclear weapon with “only,” say, 100 kilotons yield is still several times as powerful as the bombs dropped in 1945.
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