Nuclear Fission for Dummies

Mushroom cloud (Nagasaki)

Spend a few hours surfing the internet and, within the search results on almost any topic, you're bound to run across articles published by incompetents at dead (or dying) content farms. In that vein, we picked a subject at random and – wonder of wonders – found an article written by a hubbie over at HubPages.com. The topic? nuclear fusion. The freelancer in question? he calls himself hassam, and here's a look at an article he "wrote" (perhaps I should say "reworded from elsewhere") on the topic of "How Does A Nuclear Bomb Work?"

No one at the Antisocial Network claims to be a nuclear physicist, though we also don't pronounce the word "nuke-you-lar," either. Be that as it may, we found it interesting that hassam did such a poor job in his explanation, beginning with:

"Literally, fission means splitting of heavy nucleus in which energy is released as a reaction, but the inside of fission is quite complicated and can be only understood by people who are studying Physics. I will try to make the context simple and comprehensible. In nuclear fission, there are two types of processes:

• Gun-triggered
• Implosion"

Well, no: those are two different types of fission bombs ("A-bombs"), not two different types of fission. The process of fission is something quite different: in short, the fission of an atom of Uranium-235 (U235) can follow several paths, including the following:

To an atom of U-235 add one neutron, which creates a highly unstable atom of U-236. This atom spontaneously splits into: one atom of Barium 144 one atom of Krypton 89 two-plus neutrons gamma rays energy (e = mc²) The extra neutrons wandering around in the mass of U-235 are available to add to other atoms, thereby creating a chain reaction. The energy released from each atom in this form of fission is approximately 215 MeV. That doesn't seem like much, but multiply it by the number of atoms in, say, a kilogram of U-235 (2.5 x 10^24) and it's hella lot - about the equivalent of 10 tons of dynamite or 24 million kilowatt hours. That is how a nuclear bomb works

In other words, hassam doesn't explain jack about how a nuclear bomb works; plus he either doesn't know when Albert Einstein died (1955), when the first fission bomb was exploded (1945) or both. That makes hassam our hubbie... errr, Dumbass of the Day. Note: Hassam isn't writing in his native language, so we cut him slack for his (many) grammatical errors...

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