THE MAKING OF THE H-BOMB: NUCLEAR FISSION

THE MAKING OF THE H-BOMB: NUCLEAR FISSION

Cool! I promised to do this but this week has been hectic. However let’s get down to it as promised.

The intent again is to steer interest in science as it is always in all my science expedition. My goal is to build a critical mass of Africans that can see science not as what they have been told but for what it is: A FUN expedition. IT is not intended to deliver a tool to those with mischievous intents.

I got a number of calls from well-meaning friends asking me not to proceed. I gave them thoughts, trust me and have moderated what I should have penned down.

So let’s proceed. As in all things in nature, the secrets are hidden. Life is encoded in secrets; however a search will deliver those secrets. So is this subject. We must search out the secrets by a concerted research endeavor and efforts. We cannot sit idly by and expect God to do our work, like I used to say, to outsource our responsibilities to God.  Nothing happens if we do nothing.

Nuclear fission was first identified with Uranium. It is the splitting of the Uranium nuclear into two smaller nuclear. However, when scientist calculated the mass of the two nuclear from the splitting process, the discovered that they were not equal to the original Uranium atom that was sliced.

In other words Uranium sliced is not equal to A+B resulting from that split.

Look at this from another angle. I have an apple, I cut the apple into two with a sharp knife, but when I weigh what I have cut, they were not equal to the original apple.

Initially it was a puzzle. What the scientist didn’t know at that time was that energy had mass. When you split an atom, the bidding energy is released as heat. Or say it this way; you have also released the glue that was bidding the core of the atom.

It was professor Albeit Einstein who discovered that secret E=MCsqared. He postulated that the lost mass went into the energy released and stated that simple equation.  Where E is energy, M is mass and C is the speed of light. That became the bases for the entire Manhattan project that produced the little boy bomb dropped in Hiroshima, Japan by the US.

So how do you split a Uranium atom?

Two ways; with a knife or a cutlass. LOL!!!

I told you earlier that Uranium has two variants (Scientist call it ISOTOPES). U 235 and U238

In nature this variant are combined in the ratio of 99.3% for Uranium 238 and only about 0.7% of Uranium 235. Isn’t God Wonderful? Precise combination! So we are safe with this. Let me tell you more stories. Uranium 238 does not undergo spontaneous fission, Uranium 235 does. It is the U 235 that is the dangerous element. And you have to think Hard, spend lots of bucks, work for years to isolate it.

However men created another dangerous element from U238, it is called Plutonium. Plutonium, like U235 undergoes spontaneous fission, but it is not found in nature. Not even in Pluto where its name was derived. You can only make Plutonium from U238. It is one of the most dangerous elements man has created. There are other ones though. Without Plutonium and U235, you can’t make a bomb.

Remember, that the energy of the bomb will come from E=MCsquared

So the Knife is called thermal (slow) Neutron and the Cutlass is called Fast Neutron.

Let’s leave it for another day right!!!

Listen to this: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter” Proverbs 25:2. Do you know who the Kings are?

Lets do it again