In fact, both are atomic bombs. The difference is that each of them performs a different process with atoms to obtain energy. The simplest nuclear bomb, which is usually called just “atomic”, breaks uranium nuclei, transforming them into lighter atoms. But breaking atomic nuclei is not the same as breaking a rock, for example. If you hammer a rock, put the pieces together and put them on a scale, you will see that the weight of all the fragments added up is equal to that of the original pedrona. In the “hammering” that the bomb gives to the uranium atoms, the added weight of the “shards” will be a little less than the original, because the uranium loses a little of its mass. Where will she stop? Who solves the riddle is the physicist Albert Einstein: in his theory of relativity, he teaches that any tiny bit of matter is formed by a mastodons amount of energy. That is, the uranium that disappears is transformed into pure energy, releasing brutal force.
To give you an idea, the breaking of less than 1 kilo of matter was enough to devastate the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II, with a force equivalent to 15 thousand tons of dynamite. Did you find it a lot? Know that the so-called H-bombs, of hydrogen, are thousands of times more powerful than that. The secret is that, instead of breaking atoms, they fuse nuclei, joining two hydrogen atoms to form one helium. In this process, some of the mass of the hydrogen is lost and, again, transformed into energy. The difference is that fusion extracts more energy from the cake of atoms. Just to give you a sense of the drama, just remember that the record explosion among hydrogen bombs was simply 5,000 times greater than that of Hiroshima.
Environmentalists never tire of warning that these explosives could turn Earth into an asteroid project. “We saw that the small nuclear war of 1945, which destroyed two cities, was enough. But the problem remains”, says physicist Philip Morrison, one of the scientists who created the Hiroshima bomb and now works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States.
ATOMIC BOMB
1. The atomic bomb that you see on the side is the Little Boy (“Garotinho”), which devastated the city of Hiroshima, in 1945. explodes
2. The shock of the explosion propels a uranium-235 bullet over a sphere made of the same material. This impact gives rise to fission reactions, the breaking of the nuclei of atoms that will release energy.
3. With the bump, the unstable and heavy atoms of uranium-235 burst, releasing energy and neutrons that continue the reaction. Each atom that breaks releases new neutrons that break more nuclei, in a chain effect that releases more and more energy.
HYDROGEN BOMB
1. In the hydrogen bomb, the fuse used is not a conventional explosive, but an atomic bomb like the one in Hiroshima. Again, the burst moment of this charge is determined by means of a remote control.
2. This explosion hits a compartment full of lithium compound, transforming this substance into deuterium and tritium. The atoms of these elements are isotopes, that is, «direct relatives» of hydrogen – hence the name of the bomb. All have only one proton but different numbers of neutrons
3. Because they are very light and subject to very high temperatures, the deuterium and tritium atoms tend to unite, creating a helium atom that is lighter than the previous two combined. The leftover mass gives rise to the energy of the bomb.
Read too:
– What is nuclear fission and fusion?
– How does the atomic clock work?
– What was the biggest atomic bomb in the world?