HOW ATOMIC BOMB WORK? | WHICH ELEMENT USED IN ATOMIC BOMB? | AND HOW DID IT BEGIN? |

How atomic bomb work?

At 5:30 in the morning, on July 16, 1945, near a small town called Almagordo New Mexico, the course of human history was changed.  The first atomic bomb was detonated that day, and sealed humanity's fate. "How atomic bomb work?"

WHO INVENTED ATOMIC BOMB?

Many worked to accomplish this engineering feat, but the leader of the Manhattan Project theory, and the man believed to be the father of the atomic bomb, was Robert Oppenheimer.  

After witnessing its terrible power on that fateful day, Oppenheimer felt very bad, he quoted a phrase from the sacred Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita - "Now I have become death, destroyer of the world" We its terrible power.  Know but how does it actually work.

 

ATOMIC BOMB WORK?

The atomic bomb works on the principle that when you break the nucleus of an atom, a large amount of energy is released.  But why does this energy come out?  Because it takes a large amount of energy to bind the nucleus together.  

When you separate it, that energy is released.  The analogy is like a pile of bowling balls.  If you were to shoot a ball in the stack, you would give up all the energy you spent in stacking them together.  

You can think of the nucleus of an atom as being "stacked" similarly.  The larger the nucleus, the easier it is to separate it.

WHICH ELEMENT USED IN ATOMIC BOMB? 

Scientists chose the largest and heaviest nucleus that is found to be the best candidate for division in nature — uranium.  Uranium is unique in that its isotopic is the only naturally occurring element capable of sustaining a nuclear fission reaction.

A uranium atom has 92 protons, and 146 neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 238 - or U238 simultaneously - the most naturally occurring element on the periodic table.  The U238 however is generally stable in nature, and is not fissionable or "splittable" because it is very stable.

  A very small portion of uranium, when it is mined, forms the isotope U235.  This isotope has similar protons, but only 143 neutrons, or 3 fewer than U238.  The U235 is highly unstable.  

Which makes it "highly fissionable" or "splittable".  When uranium 235 is cracked by a neutron, it becomes uranium 236.  U236 is so unstable that it almost immediately splits into two more stable atoms, krypton and barium.  Sometimes it can also be divided into two other elements.

In the process of splitting and forming 2 more stable atoms, a whole bunch of energy is released along with 3 neutrons.  

These 3 neutrons fly and kill more U235 atoms. And thus a chain reaction occurs leading to more and more U235 splitting and eventually a larger explosion.

So what is the big deal?  Why don't all countries have atomic bombs.

  The problem is that U235 is only 0.7% of the isotopes in natural uranium. And a whole bunch of it also needs to build an atomic bomb.  

Natural mined uranium must therefore be "enriched" to obtain U235.  Sometimes this is done by turning it into gas, and the lighter allows the gas to flow through the barrier in such a way that it rises to the top - because the U235 is lighter than the U238.

Another engineering challenge is to create a vessel with the correct size and material to contain the neutrons after fission, so that they do not escape, but rather cause more atoms to fission.  

So there is usually a container holding a spherical shape, which contains fissile material.  And it is lined with a special mirror so that the neutron can be brought back to fissile material again instead of escaping from the vessel.

Then the right amount of fissile material has to be placed inside this vessel.  This is called super-critical mass.  

This is the minimum material required for a chain reaction to occur.  This traditional explosive charge inside the container initiates a chain reaction to produce your typical mushroom cloud.

We should thank our lucky stars that although the concept of the atomic bomb is simple, in fact the process of making the bomb is not so simple.

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