How do they differ in their material makeup, efficiency, scope, scale and destructive power?
In: Chemistry
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.
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