this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
890 points (96.5% liked)
Memes
45609 readers
788 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Splitting Helium doesn't release energy.
Disclaimer: this post has not been verified for accuracy
SPREADING MISSINFORMATION ONLINE!
based
Who's this "Miss Information"?
I don't know, but I heard she's spreading.
She really gets around, if you know what I mean.
minor spelling mistake 😔
I think the joke would work with Radon though.
IIRC, Radon hasn't been proven to be a noble gas. Xenon is downright promiscuous compared to the other noble gases, and some chemists think that trend continues into radon.
And when you trap a xenon inside a C60 cage and start stuffing other things in there, the chemistry gets really weird.
I mean, it's in the column. Close enough.
People across the board think that they will never need any math or science after leaving school. That's how you get jokes that anyone who was not asleep in physics would not have created.
Splitting a random atom wouldn't cause a chain reaction anyway. It's just a meme, lol.
....I need to know more. We can just break open helium all Willy nilly? What's the biggest atom we can safely split?
Atoms lighter than iron take energy to split, and release energy when fusing. For atoms heavier than iron, it's the opposite.
And what happens with iron ?
You lose energy if you split or fuse it
It extinguishes the stars it forms in. Once you have enough Iron, and the amount is actually quite small compared to the rest of the mass of the star, that triggers a nova. This is due to Iron needing extra energy to either fuse or fission.
Close, the maximum binding energy per atomic mass unit is iron-56, but splitting heavier atoms does not guarrentee releasing energy. If you consider the graph of specific bonding energy against atomic mass, then also consider that you need two numbers that add up to the original mass, it is clear that you need approximately more than 100u to release energy on fission.