What is the defference between fission and fusion? please help?
89124
Fusion combines two nuclei making a heavier partical (such as occurs on the sun or any star fusing two hydrogen nuclei into one helium--thus we get the word helios which refers to the sun.)\n\nFission is the breaking apart of one nucleus into two lighter particles. This is what occurs in a nuclear reactor.\n\nFor atomic or nuclear detonation, fission is the process. However, with a hydrogen bomb: fission is the beginning process which generates the necessary heat and force to begin the fusion process on hydrogen (as in what occurs on the sun) which results in a much bigger blast.
312445
there is not much of a difference just that atomic bombs were the first to be built they both operate the same way. nuclear energy is taking the action of a nuclear bomb and controlling it to make power. what happens is the nuclear action that a reactor has produces heat which is absorbed by water that then turns to steam and the steam is used to turn a turbine that produces electricity.
7743
It depends on the mass.  Take a look at the graph in the source link. Elements with an atomic mass lower than that of Iron (or there abouts) generally must have energy added to the system to split it.  Conversely, those same atoms lighter than iron will release enegy when you fuse them together.  This is the property of nuclear fission.  It is how the sun works to create heat and light by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, and it is also the principle behind the H-bomb (the hydrogen bomb, or the fusion bomb, which is much more powerful than the fission bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima).\n\nIf the atom is heavier than iron, it will release energy when you split it.  Heavy elements like uranium and plutonium are unstable, and will naturally decay, releasing particles and energy.  If these high-energy particles hit other unstable elements--like more uranium--you can get a chain reaction, which makes decay happen more quickly.  Under controlled levels of uranium density, you can make this heat useful to boil water and run turbines and generate energy.  But if the density of the unstable element is really high, the chain reaction can take off uncontrolably, causing a nuclear explosion.  this is the principle behind fission bombs, like those dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.\n\nHydrogen bombs require tritium, which is a rare isotope of hydrogen that has two neutrons.  the technology behind nuclear fusion is more complicated than that behind fission.  Power plants currently use fission, but fission has the problem of producing radioactive waste.  Hydrogen fusion has the problem of being hard to control, although people are working on developing a fusion reactor to generate energy, which would be advantageous.
261052
The expression "split an atom" usually refers to "splitting" the nucleus of an atom. A multi-nucleon nucleus to be sure; if it only has one nucleon then it can't be split as such. By "splitting" we mean separating a nuleus into smaller nuclei. The technical term is "fission".\n\nA nucleus is composed of particles called protons and neutrons, held together by a force called the "strong nuclear force" which only acts over "nucleonic distances". In "competition" with this force is the electronic repulsion of all the protons in the nucleus, hence the strong nuclear force has to be greater than the electronic repulsion to hold the nucleus together.\n\nAny nucleus with a certain number of protons and neutrons, has a certain stability (actually this is not a strictly correct statment, but it would require going into a lot further detail to make it more accurate), all nuclei naturally tend to become more stable and this is typically "achieved" by releasing various types of particles including:\n\ngamma-rays (electromagnetic radiation)\n\nbeta-particles (electrons emitted from a neutron within the nucleus which is consequntly now a proton).\n\nNeutrons\n\nAlpha-particles which are nuclei themselves composed of 2 neutrons and two protons, (since it has two protons this is actually a Helium nucleus).\n\nEmission of an alpha particle could be considerd as fission but the term more commonly refers to a nuclues splitting "nearly in half", i.e. into two very large nuclei.\n\nSo to finally answer your question, fission can be induced by causing a nucleus to absorb a particle such as a neutron or a photon, which makes the nucleus less stable, ie. more likey to fission sooner. In practice this can be achieved many ways, but most boil down to providing an appropriate type of radiation to an apropriate nucleus, such a neutron to a U-238 nucleus.
958392
Hydrogen bombs ARE nuclear bombs; they are a particular type of nuclear bomb and are powered by a fusion reaction.  By "nuclear bombs", I assume you meant fission (usually uranium-based) bombs, which are another type of nuclear bomb.\n\nBasically, fission bombs consist of unstable elements which constantly break down into lighter elements.  This breakdown releases heat and subatomic particles [radiation].  Being subjected to radiation also causes the breakdown rate to increase, so in large enough quantities, a chain reaction occurrs where millions of atoms split nearly instantaneously due to the high radiation from the neighbouring atoms disintegrating.  Large quantities of heat and radiation are released, causing a massive explosion and residual radiation which lasts for years.\n\nIf you meant to ask whether or not fusion bombs have replaced the less-powerful fission bombs, then the answer is a more complicated "yes-and-no"... yes, the fusion reaction is much more intense and releases much more energy than the fission reaction does.  Fusion describes the process whereby two atoms of a light element (hydrogen atoms, in this case) are bonded together to create a heavier element (helium, in the case of the hydrogen bomb).  However, these atoms do not spontaneously fuse - catalyzing the reaction requires an immense amount of energy.  Obviously the energy subsequently released is enormous - more than enough to fuel the fusion of more atoms - but to initially get the reaction started, a huge amount of energy is required.  The best way to do this, in the case of a hydrogen bomb, is a small fission bomb which generates the required energy for the fusion to begin.  Since a fission bomb is used to trigger the fusion bomb, it is still necessary to have engineers and scientists who study and build fission bombs, so it would be inaccurate to say that the fusion bomb has "replaced" the fission bomb.
848370
Basically, nucleus give up energy when they get heavier (by combineing several nucleons) until you get to iron (adding nucleons to iron and heavier nucleus costs you energy).\nThe largest energy output comes from combining hydrogen nucleus and getting helium (fusing helium returns a bit less energy and so on as it gets heavier).\nBut how to you fuse hydrogen nucleus togetenr? First, there is  this electon shell around that prevents nucleaus from getting close enough together to fuse; so the first step is to give enough energy so the atoms are ionized, in the case of hydrogen, that means getting the nucleus naked.  Then you have to get two nucleus together, but both of them contain a proton, and that emans you have to overcome the natural repulsion of like charges, this mens getting them hot enough so that they can slam inot one another, and this also requires having enough pressure so that there will be enough hydrogen nucleus around that there would be a good possibility of two of them hitting ona anotehr and fusing.\n\nAnd that is where it is getting complicated: we are talking about millions of degrees, so evidently nothing material can contain that without melting and evaporating, so one needs either inertial confinement (you heat it up so fast, the hydrogen does not have time to move) or magnetic confinement (since the atoms nucleus have the positive chage of the proton, they will respond to electrical and magnetic fields).\n\nThe sun accomplishes the heat/pressure/confinement trick by using its massive gravity; an advantage we do not have in a potential thermonuclear reactor.  But very smart people are working on it, hopefully they will figure out something that works.
938115
No, a hydrogen bomb implies a fusion bomb. Even though fission is use to ignite the hydrogen, it is still a fusion bomb.
391725
In physics, nuclear fusion is the process by which multiple nuclei join together to form a heavier nucleus. It is accompanied by the release or absorption of energy depending on the masses of the nuclei involved. Iron and nickel nuclei have the largest binding energies per nucleon of all nuclei and therefore are the most stable. The fusion of two nuclei lighter than iron or nickel generally releases energy while the fusion of nuclei heavier than them absorbs energy; vice-versa for the reverse process, nuclear fission.\n\nNuclear fusion of light elements releases the energy that causes stars to shine and hydrogen bombs to explode. Nuclear fusion of heavy elements (absorbing energy) occurs in the extremely high-energy conditions of supernova explosions. Nuclear fusion in stars and supernovae is the primary process by which new natural elements are created. It is this reaction that is harnessed in fusion power.\n\nIt takes considerable energy to force nuclei to fuse, even those of the least massive element, hydrogen. But the fusion of lighter nuclei, which creates a heavier nucleus and a free neutron, will generally release more energy than it took to force them together — an exothermic process that can produce self-sustaining reactions.\n\nThe energy released in most nuclear reactions is much larger than that for chemical reactions, because the binding energy that holds a nucleus together is far greater than the energy that holds electrons to a nucleus. For example, the ionization energy gained by adding an electron to a hydrogen nucleus is 13.6 electron volts -- less than one-millionth of the 17 MeV released in the D-T (deuterium-tritium) reaction shown to the top right.\n\nThe steps of the main cycle of nuclear fusion in stars were worked out by Hans Bethe.
513289
To add to rya's answer: fusion doesn't leave radioactive waste, but we don't know how to do it yet.
435251
Nuclear energy is an energy that comes from the conversion of masss into energy following e=(mass)(speed of light^2)\n\nWhen atoms are binded they use energy. And when they bind the total mass is less then the mass of each atoms before binding.  The mass is turned into energy to bind the atoms. \nMass= (mass of all protons + mass of all neutron) - Mass after binded\n\nTake the mass from the first equation and multiply it by 931.494 Mev/u\n\nThis will give you the binding energy. \n\nThis leads to an exothermic reaction that releases nuclear enrgy. Fision and Fusion follow these princables and release great amoutns of energy. \n\nWe have not yet devoloped an effeciant way of harnessing this power, we can get about 1% effeciancy. If you turned an apple into pure enrgy you would have enough energy to level the world many times over with just a couple apples.
106996
Currently we are using nuclear FISSION (splitting) in all nuclear reactors of the world. The only problem is all the waste fission produces (radioactive waste whose half-life is one-million years!). Because FUSION (fusing) involves combining, it produces no waste whatsoever. The only problem is that fusion requires MASS amounts of energy (via heat), so in the end, more energy is used than is created. Because it is almost impossible to receive benefit from heat fusion, scientists are currently working on COLD FUSION (requires little energy), but nothing of significance has developed yet. \n\nSo all in all the cost of nuclear fusion is that it requires too much and provides too little.
721125
fusion is when two elementary particles collide and combine or fuse to make -- even temporarily -- a new particle. In the graphic below, a form of the hydrogen nucleus -- Tritium -- collides with another form of the hydrogen nucleus -- Deuterium -- to form a new particle. (Deuterium and Tritium are isotopes of hydrogen -- a form of water.) The fused particle is not stable, and quickly decays via the split decay mode into a neutron -- moving very fast, i.e., "hot" -- and a helium neucleus -- also know as an "alpha" particle and energy.\nThe radioactive by-products from fission are undeniably bad. They last for tens of thousands of years and can cause untold problems, the worst of which is through terrosists using the waste products for weapons. The fast neutron from fusion can potentially interact with metals a cause them to become radioactive. This process can be minimized by have neutron shielding between the fusion burn and any metals in the reactor. However, the radioactive metals produced -- and any ash from the fusion burn itself -- is a low-level radioactivity that is not considered dangerous, with half-lives in the tens of years. There is no comparison -- radioactive waste from fission is very dangerous, radioactive waste from fusion is not very dangerous.\nIt is hard for most people to understand where this energy comes from, and how much it is. Most people have heard of Einstein's famous equation:\n\nE = mc2\n\nWhen the fusion reactions listed above occur, a small amount of mass disappears. The small amount of mass is converted into a large amount of energy. How much is large? A typical chemical reaction in which hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce water, releases about 1 eV of energy. The fusion process typically releases 1,000,000 times as much energy. Historically, when people talk about the benefits of nuclear fusion, they refer to how much fuel must be burned to equal to each other.\nNuclear fusion takes water, burns it, releases helium (and a small amount of radiation in the form of neutrons), and converts the missing mass into massive amounts of energy.
119700
An induced nuclear fission event. A thermal (slow-moving) neutron is absorbed by the nucleus of a uranium-235 atom, which in turn splits into fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) and free neutrons. The particular elements and number of neutrons produced by each single fission event are random.Nuclear fission is a process in nuclear physics in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei as fission products, and usually some by-product particles. Hence, fission is a form of elemental transmutation. The by-products include free neutrons, photons usually in the form gamma rays, and other nuclear fragments such as beta particles and alpha particles. Fission of heavy elements is an exothermic reaction and can release substantial amounts of useful energy both as gamma rays and as kinetic energy of the fragments.\n\nNuclear fission is used to produce energy for nuclear power and to drive explosion of nuclear weapons. Fission is useful as a power source because some materials, called nuclear fuels, both generate neutrons as part of the fission process and also undergo triggered fission when impacted by a free neutron. Nuclear fuels can be part of a self-sustaining chain reaction that releases energy at a controlled rate in a nuclear reactor or a very rapid uncontrolled rate in a nuclear weapon.\n\nThe amount of free energy contained in nuclear fuel is millions of times the amount of energy contained in a similar mass of chemical fuel such as gasoline, making nuclear fission a very tempting source of energy; however, the waste products of nuclear fission are highly radioactive and remain so for millennia, giving rise to a nuclear waste problem. Concerns over nuclear waste accumulation and over the immense destructive potential of nuclear weapons counterbalance the desirable qualities of fission as an energy source, and give rise to intense ongoing political debate over nuclear power.
952789
fission reaction or fusion? chain reaction? what molecules? neutrons may be? Uranuim isotope? nuclear fuel?\ni can't help you.
247051
Fission. The process by which a parent cell (including the nucleus) divides into two smaller copies of itself.
692026
fission is used in nuclear plants to make power. HOW FISSION WORKS: In a commercial nuclear power plant, a sufficiently large quantity of fuel material (usually enriched uranium) is accumulated in a reactor pile such that a "chain reaction" occurs, in which the neutrons emitted by a single fission reaction are captured by another nucleus to trigger another reaction, and so on. This solcomhouse.com link explains the basics of nuclear fission and has some good schematic illustrations of nuclear power plants.
456566
H-bomb is the result of fusion, fusing hydrogen into helium and/or heavier elements.. A-bomb is the result of fission, splitting atoms of uranium or plutonium into lighter elements.