I get the basics, energy equal mass times velocity squared, but how does that create a nuclear reaction large enough to make a bomb?
In: Physics
It doesn’t give a recipe to nuclear bombs. But it does give the right idea that mass is not a fundamental property but results from the amount of energy contained.
It does give a glimpse at nuclear bombs: you would know the masses of atoms, small and large. You would know that larger atoms are more heavy than the combined masses of smaller atoms (that’s called mass defect). Pre-Einstein this might just be a curiosity, maybe even a fluke you put down to bad measurements.
But post-Einstein, now there is the elephant in the room this mass difference might represent energy, and if you split heavy atoms this energy must be released. and if you run the numbers, the energy released “per gram of fuel” is really really high.
Really really high amount of energy released is a bomb, or power plant, or both. That excites a lot of people enough to throw huge amounts of money at it.
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