why splitting a tiny particle can cause such a devastating blast
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When one atom splits, it releases some energy and a bunch of neutrons. Those neutrons are what causes other atoms to split, like shooting a cue ball at other clusters of billiard balls.
There’s a bunch of atoms. More than you can conceive. When one atom splits, it makes 2 split in the next generation, then 4 in the next, 8 after that, and so forth. By the 64th generation (which occurs in an eyeblink), you’re getting nearly 2*10^19 splits all at once. That’s a tremendous amount of energy being released all at once.
The amazing thing about a nuclear explosion is that all this heat can be released at once, before it explodes and scatters all the Uranium everywhere, stopping the reaction. A chemical reaction is slower, has less energy per breakdown (chemical bonds have less energy to give than nuclear bonds), and uses big molecules instead of single atoms.
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