why splitting a tiny particle can cause such a devastating blast
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Splitting one particle won’t. In fact, particles split all the time all around you and even in your own body. What creates that huge blast is when a huge number of them split all at once.
When an atom splits, some of its neutrons fly off and it releases some of the energy that was holding them there. And maybe, one of those neutrons hits another atom just right to make it split too. And so on. That’s what the “chain reaction” is.
However, even in solids, when you get really really small, there’s actually a lot of space between the atoms, so it’s not very likely a neutron will hit anything. But when you can get a huge number of atoms to split in a chain reaction like this, that’s how you get all that energy.
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