How do control rods in nuclear reactors work?
In: 221
Think of the uranium rods as emitting ping-pong balls. The balls bounce against the other rods, and when a ‘pong’ happens you now have 2 ping-pong balls and the process continues.
The control rods are like putting your hand in between the rods. Depending on how far in you put your hand, few or a lot of the balls will hit your soft hand instead of the hard surface of the rods and fall down into the pit below (away from the all the rods) where they stop doing anything.
Thus you can control how frenetic the ping-pong action is by how far in your put your hand.
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