why splitting a tiny particle can cause such a devastating blast
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E=mc²
The particle you split is heavier than the resulting pieces you get after splitting it. Where did the mass go? We know that energie and mass are the same thing (see the famous equation from Einstein). The tiny bit of mass results in a lot of energy, because the energy (E) is equal to the mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared. The speed of light is a big number and gets even bigger if squared.
TL DR: When splitting a particle a bit of mass gets converted to a lot of energy
The answer to your question is, unfortunately, so fundamental that the explanation will probably not yield the insight you seek. That shouldn’t stop you from asking though. Just be prepared to very quickly run into the “it’s that way because it is” wall.
When you cut a piece of pie, you always end up with exactly same amount of pie as when you started. For example, if you start with 200 grams of pumpkin pie, and you cut it perfectly in half, you end up with two slices that are 100 grams each.
But when you get down to the atomic level, things change in fundamental ways. If you split an atom, the parts you end up with don’t add up to the mass of the original atom. A small part of the atom’s mass is converted from mass to energy. The reason this happens is “fundamental” to the laws of our universe. There is no deeper “why”, it just is.
So when you split an atom, some of the mass is converted to energy, but how much energy? You might have heard of the formula E=mc^(2). If we spell that out, it’s energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
This formula tells us how much energy will be produced by the reduction in mass that occurs when you split an atom.
Let’s pretend for just a moment that we could convert 1kg of pie directly into energy. How much energy would that get us?
m = 1 kilograms (kg)
c = 300,000,000 meters per second (ms-1)
This gives us 1kg × 300,000,000ms^(-1) = 90,000,000,000,000,000 joules
Cool, right? What the hell are joules? 1 joule per second is the same as 1 watt, so we can convert joules to kilowatt hours to get 25,000,000,000 kWh. In the US, the average home uses around 10,500 kWh per year, so we can divide 25,000,000,000 kWh ÷ 10,500 kWh to get roughly 2,380,952.
So to summarize, E=mc^(2) tells us that 1 kg (around 2.2 lbs) of matter converted directly to energy is enough to power 2,380,952 average US homes for an entire year.
This fundamental aspect of matter/energy conversion is why splitting the atom results in so much energy being released.
In short, it doesn’t.
Take a nuclear reactor for example. It splits atoms slowly, and in a controlled manner, and all we get is heat, no explosion.
A nuclear bomb on the other hand is based around chain reactions. 1 atom splits 2, that atom splits 4 others, that one splits 8, etc. This happens incredibly quickly so that the energy released from the previous atom splitting hasn’t “moved,” much yet, so when the next split releases energy it piles on top, creating a massive increase in heat and pressure. When that pressure is released, it becomes an explosion.
Because the two atoms that are created have a combined mass of less than the original atom. The missing mass becomes energy and a little bit of mass being converted to energy is a lot of energy. E=mc^2
Well then why does fusing 2 atoms release so much energy? Because with small atoms, the two atoms have more mass combined than the resulting single atom. You again have lost mass being converted to energy.
So, both fusion and fission result in mass loss? Well, yes and no. Right around an iron atom it switches. Fusion above the mass of an iron atom absorbs energy. Fission below the mass of an iron atom absorbs energy. Both to create the additional mass.
Fun fact: The sun converts approximately 4.5 million metric tons of mass into energy every second.
A nuclear fission event is like triggering mouse trap.
The atomic components (protons and neutrons) are held apart by intervening particles. Basically they aren’t packed in very compactly and there is room to collapse and snap together.
This is like the arms of mousetrap held apart by a latch.
The incredibly strong spring of the trap will slam the arm to the trap if the latch fails.
The stronger the spring, the stronger the trap.
Most interactions you experience are actually involved with the electrical force. You can think of this as the spring in the trap.
Nuclear reactions involve the strong force. Which is, well, much much stronger. Like 130x stronger.
So when a nuclear reaction triggers, it’s a much much stronger mousetrap. Like the different between using a paperclip for the trap spring, vs a cars suspension springs.
On its own, a single split atom releases a lot of energy and subatomic particles. Not enough to cause a massive explosion on its own.
The massive explosion is because splitting that atom causes a chain reaction where the subatomic particles released from the first split atom start splitting a lot of the surrounding atoms, cascading so quickly it might as well be instantaneous. This chain reaction of releasing energy when applied to a large enough amount of unstable material releases far more energy in an explosive manner than typical explosives which rely on chemical reactions.
An analogy: imagine the size of an explosion is measured in money. Say we want an explosion of $1000. Using conventional explosives, the best you can do is 10c pieces. So to make it up to $1000, it’ll take a lot. But the energy released from a nuclear explosive device is like using $10 notes, or even $100 notes, so to make the same explosion takes a lot less material due to the massively greater energy released.
Also of note that typical nuclear explosives are in two stages, which was the whole point of the Manhattan project to figure out.
The nuclear bomb design is essentially an egg. A central core of heavy, unstable material such as uranium or other radioactive materials, because they are already breaking down naturally and only need a little push to accelerate the process. Surrounded by a shell of conventional explosives. At detonation, the shell detonates and compresses the core, giving it energy and pressing the atoms close to each other and beginning the chain reaction at the atomic level that starts them splitting, releasing massive amounts of energy. Some of that energy will be heat and light (typical explosion) and some of it will be other types of energy (xrays, gamma, etc) or particle radtion (alpha, beta, etc).
If you’ve heard of the equation e = mc² what this mean is the (potential) energy released is equal to the mass(weight divided by gravity) times by the speed of light squared.
Because the speed of light is a huge number (400,000 meters per second/180,000 miles) a tiny amount of mass can give a huge amount of energy.
Splitting it just happens to be one of the ways we get the energy out. The same way we burn fuel to yet the energy (heat).
E=mc^2.
The energy of any object, including an atom, is directly correlated to the speed of light squared multiplied by its mass.
The speed of light squared is 89,875,517,873,681,764 (m^2 / s^2). That means for a object with mass 1kg, said object contains an energy of 89,875,517,873,681,764 Joules of energy.
We can’t access this energy normally because it’s all contained by the energy holding together atoms. You split or combine atoms correctly, you can essentially ‘access’ this energy fund.
Because there is a tremendous amount of energy that goes into the formation of these atoms. Splitting them apart releases that tremendous energy.
Remember that all of the elements on the periodic table that are heavier than Iron, were form in Super Novas. That is a blast on an incomprehensible scale. Compare to that, an atom bomb is miniscule.
Think of atoms as grenades. During normal chemical reactions, you are basically just throwing grenades around without pulling the pin. Sure, it’ll hurt more or less depending on how hard you throw it, which is similar to what’s going on normally.
Now when you pull the pin on the grenade, it’ll explode, doing an immense amount of damage.
Now, there’s extremely massive numbers of atoms in a small amount of substance, so it’s like the difference between dropping a swimming pool full of grenades on something, and just bouncing off like balls, or having them all explode.
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