As I’ve learned more, the energy from a single atom is not much. They split nitrogen long before uranium but it didn’t really matter. You need the chain reaction of uranium.
From Gemini:
The energy released from a single uranium atom splitting is an infinitesimally tiny fraction of what’s needed to even warm a mug of water. You would need the simultaneous fission of approximately 1.96 quadrillion (1,960,000,000,000,000) uranium atoms to heat a single mug of water.
*JFC what’s up with the downvotes? Because I used Gemini?
I was interested in whether this was accurate. I got a similar answer, but I know almost nothing about nuclear fission and math is not my strong suit. Here it is anyway:
The heat capacity of water is fairly linear. At normal atmospheric pressure, it’s 4,200J/kg°C, which means a 300ml mug of water would take 1,260 joules to raise by 1°C and thus 75,600 joules to raise by 60°C.
Fission of a single atomic nucleus of U-235 releases an average of 3.2e-11 joules (0.000000000032). To release 75,600 joules would presumably take fission of 2.3625e+15 atoms (2,362,500,000,000,000 – two quadrillion three hundred sixty-two trillion five hundred billion).
You uh definitely at least took a heat transfer class in college or you wouldn’t know what to do with all this stuff. Hell, I took one 10 years ago, and I barely know what to do with this information anymore. Kudos to you for doing the napkin math
I mean I’m not saying that you’re an expert, but my us highschool education regarding nuclear fission was pretty handwavy, and won’t come up again in most careers
As I’ve learned more, the energy from a single atom is not much. They split nitrogen long before uranium but it didn’t really matter. You need the chain reaction of uranium.
From Gemini:
The energy released from a single uranium atom splitting is an infinitesimally tiny fraction of what’s needed to even warm a mug of water. You would need the simultaneous fission of approximately 1.96 quadrillion (1,960,000,000,000,000) uranium atoms to heat a single mug of water.
*JFC what’s up with the downvotes? Because I used Gemini?
Thank God there was an AI here to tell us something we could just look up.
I was interested in whether this was accurate. I got a similar answer, but I know almost nothing about nuclear fission and math is not my strong suit. Here it is anyway:
The heat capacity of water is fairly linear. At normal atmospheric pressure, it’s 4,200J/kg°C, which means a 300ml mug of water would take 1,260 joules to raise by 1°C and thus 75,600 joules to raise by 60°C.
Fission of a single atomic nucleus of U-235 releases an average of 3.2e-11 joules (0.000000000032). To release 75,600 joules would presumably take fission of 2.3625e+15 atoms (2,362,500,000,000,000 – two quadrillion three hundred sixty-two trillion five hundred billion).
You uh definitely at least took a heat transfer class in college or you wouldn’t know what to do with all this stuff. Hell, I took one 10 years ago, and I barely know what to do with this information anymore. Kudos to you for doing the napkin math
I’m not downvoting you, but I think a lot of people, including me, would read “from Gemini” (or any AI) as “you can’t trust this information”.
ChatGPT will straight up hallucinate numbers (or any information). Gemini is much more accurate. Haven’t tried others.
heat by how much? AI as useful as ever.
Isn’t that common knowledge? I don’t think that anyone seriously believes that splitting a single atom causes an explosion.
I mean I’m not saying that you’re an expert, but my us highschool education regarding nuclear fission was pretty handwavy, and won’t come up again in most careers