I know that other things are used like hydrogen, but as far as I know, uranium is more common. If all you need is to split an atom to create a nuclear explosion, why use a rare earth metal instead of something more abundant since everything is made of atoms?
In: Physics
For an *atomic* bomb, as you say, you want the nucleus of the atom to split. When it does, since they’re positively charged (because of all the protons), the two pieces will repel each other and (perhaps) crash into other nuclei. So what you want is a kind of nucleus that holds together, but just barely, so that if it’s knocked into it’ll split into 2 more pieces, and so on, creating a fast chain reaction that blows up. A certain kind of Uranium (235) is just right for that.
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