I like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjqIJW_Qr3c) analogy. Imagine a floor covered by mousetraps. Each mousetrap is primed to go off, and a ping pong ball is placed on top of it. If the mousetrap goes of, it will fling the ping pong ball. Each mousetrap has a small probability of randomly going off. If hit by a ping pong ball, the mousetrap *will* go off.
Once one trap goes of, the flung ping pong ball might hit multiple other traps. Each of those will go off, setting off still more traps. This starts what is known as a chain reaction, with the number of traps going off increasing exponentially, because each trap that goes off is able to set off multiple other traps. The triggering of traps also releases energy (in this case, causing the ping pong balls and triggered traps to fly about).
In the analogy, the primed mousetrap is like a uranium nucleus, the ping pong ball is like a neutron within the uranium nucleus, and the triggered trap is like the byproduct of uranium fission.
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