why splitting a tiny particle can cause such a devastating blast
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Just to add to all the excellent explanations already posted (apologies if someone else has posted it):
Einstein’s most famous equation is “E=mc^2”. This tells you how much energy (E) is contained in a given amount of mass (m). Let’s say you have a very teeny tiny bit of mass (a tiny particle). In the equation, to find out how much energy it has, you multiply that tiny amount of mass by…..the speed of light “c” (which is itself a huge number), *squared* (which makes it a staggeringly huge number.) So in other words, even tiny particles have huge amounts of energy. That is what makes nuclear power (and nuclear bombs) so potent–small amounts of mass can be used to generate incredible amounts of energy.
The energies associated with atomic nuclei are about a million times as much as the energies associated with the electrons in chemical bonds. So any process altering atomic nuclei (e.g., radioactive decay) will involve about a million times as much energy as a similar process that alters chemical bonding (e.g., the bottle of hydrogen peroxide in your medicine cabinet slowly degrading)
Splitting one heavy atom releases about as much energy as burning a million atoms of combustible fuel. That’s about a nanogram of fuel, which weighs the same amount as a typical human cell. It’s almost no energy. Uranium atoms split occasionally on their own, and it’s not an issue unless you wear a uranium necklace or eat a uranium sandwich or something similarly ridiculous. (Also, uranium is more poisonous than lead. A uranium sandwich would kill you by heavy metal poisoning faster than it killed you by being radioactive.)
A nuclear bomb is a machine that makes multiple pounds of uranium (or plutonium) atoms split all at once. That releases as much energy as millions of pounds of explosives. Setting off ten million pounds of TNT would make a devastating blast too. But you don’t get that sort of blast without a sophisticated machine to make all the uranium or TNT go off at once.
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.
First off, by particle I assume you mean atoms, meaning the nucleus of an atom.
One interesting fact is that splitting an atomic nucleus ***doesn’t*** always release energy, often it would ***consume*** a lot of energy in the process. Generally, any atoms smaller than iron would require energy to split. In fact, if you are able to ***fuse*** together two separate nuclei that are smaller than iron, you actually ***produce*** a lot of energy!
Atoms that are **heavier** than iron will **release** energy when they are split.
There are ways that we can produce energy through fusion and through fission, the splitting or joining of nuclei. What we are basically accomplishing is the same process that occurs inside of stars, or during a star’s death.
If we achieve nuclear fusion, we are releasing some of the energy that is stored as mass inside of protons and neutrons that condensed out of energy from the Big bang. When you look at the mass of nuclei compared to the mass of individual protons and neutrons, you will find that the larger nuclei are less massive than protons and neutrons on their own would be of the same number. This difference in mass is accounted for by binding energy equal to the amount described by e = mc². When the two particles are joined, a little mass is lost and released as energy.
Conversely, when you form atomic nuclei that are larger than iron, that process actually consumes a lot of energy. The larger the nucleus that you try to make, the larger the amount of energy is lost while trying to make it. When a star runs out of fuel and begins to collapse and go supernova, the shockwave of a star’s death is so powerful that there is enough energy going around to form some of these types of elements. Compared to all of the lighter elements, not very much of these atoms get produced, which is why they are so much more rare than elements below iron. Gold, silver, platinum, uranium, are precious elements because they are only formed in the shock waves of dying stars.
Seeing that the nucleus of a uranium atom “stole” energy from the dying star that formed it, splitting it back apart will release the energy that it took to form in the first place.
This is also why generating fusion power would be such a monumental achievement for humanity. Instead of relying on the very rare elements that stole energy from dying stars, we could use the same abundant source of power that the stars use while they are living!
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