Since the industrial revolution in energy consumption of the company has been exponential. Today we see life is inconceivable without it, but how to meet the growing demand? This question is one of the larger fields of action with physicists from around the world today (yes, physicists are still useful to society, fortunately for those of us rolling stone now in the race.)
can say that there are 2 requirements when new sources of energy. On the one hand, the growing needs unfailingly make it necessary to find sources that can provide large amounts of energy at a reasonable price.
Moreover, every day becomes stronger the need to secure energy sources clean (we had better).
Come to the point. We've all heard of the fission and nuclear fusion (if you are wanting to complicate our lives with such similar term ...), but what is each?
Today we'll talk a bit about nuclear fission :
An atom consists of a dense nucleus (protons and neutrons) and a bunch of really tiny pellets that are dancing around (electrons). If we take another particle (usually a neutron) and fired at the atom's nucleus then, with a little luck we can destabilize the core, causing it to split in two. It's like if you throw with great force against a a marble pyramid marbles.
The trick is that to split the nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy we can harness and other neutrons, which will shoot in all directions, colliding with other nuclei, which also will break and fall off more energy and neutrons that will break atoms, we have created a chain reaction , and so we have much more energy than they have "used" to launch the first neutron.
But it serves any atom to obtain energy by fission. The larger a nucleus, the less stable and more energy released when they break. So go running to the periodic table to find the element occurring naturally (no need to create it artificially) that has the core fatter and we ran ... the Uranium . Uranium is ideal for nuclear fission and the possibility of fissions was discovered in 1939 (while in Spain decided to stop shooting us at the head stones ...).
When a nucleus fissions occur around 200 MeV (megaelectrón-Volt: A unit of energy as joules or calories ...). Vale, 200, a very beautiful, and?
Well, the energy released in a normal combustion is about 4 eV (not mega) for every molecule of oxygen!
mega The prefix indicates a million, so fission releases 50 million times more energy than the combustion !
But as always, the whole mountain is oregano, and there is a but. And that but are the products of the reaction: the chemical elements are created, unfortunately, are not stable and decay, are radioactive . And living tissues do not tend to like too much radiation they produce. Therefore, it is enclosed in special containers and stored in radioactive dumps. But of course, clean life of these elements is sooo long and we can not avoid no longer radioactive.
In summary, we have an extraordinary source of energy, but that does not meet the second requirement mentioned at the beginning, is contaminant. In the next article we will understand a little better what the merger (with U). I remind you that if you want to comment on something you can do it, nay, you must do! ;)
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