Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 1:57 pm Post subject: The Natural Philosophy Thread
I realized in the What is Nothing? thread that I'm not much of a philospher. However, I do love me some science (aka, Natural Philosphy) and thought I'd start a thread where we could ask questions about physics and stuff.
Any takers? _________________ Life: a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% fatality rate.
That's a good one to start out with... I could explain pretty easily the whole E=mc(squared) thing if you guys want. _________________ Life: a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% fatality rate.
I seriously doubt my ability to contribute anything worthwhile..but I would DEFINATELY be interested in reading what you guys have to say! I have never been good at philosophy (natural or other) discussions per se, but I thoroughly enjoy reading it all! _________________ "I drained the soul of a monk once. It tased like chocolate" ~Richard, Looking for Group
It's starts with a bit of chemistry, specifically atoms.
Hydrogen's a great place to start. It's the first element, consisting of one proton in the middle (the nucleus) and a single electron spinning around it. The next heaviest element is Helium. It's got two protons in its middle, with two electrons.
Move all the way up to uranium. It's a big ugly bastard with 92 protons plus up to 146 neutrons in its nucleus with a small army of electrons spinning around it. The nucleus is so big that it's essentially not held together that well and occasionally a couple protons will say to hell with it and eject out of the atom. So the uranium atom spits out a helium atom and changes to thorium (two steps down from uranium).
That's basically what a radioactive matieral is... an atom so big it's not that stable and, over a long enough period of time a given sample of the material (consisting of a whole whack of atoms) will entirely change into a different material. (aside: a "nuclear half-life" is the time it would take for half of a given sample of radioactive material to degrade into the next element down the road - sometimes that's hundreds of years).
With nuclear energy we take uranium atoms (or some other heavy atom like plutonium) and actually smash them apart by firing a smaller particle - usually a single neutron - through it. The resulting split is two separate atoms (wikipedia says a Barium atom and a Krypton atom), plus a pantload of energy (like, say, a nuclear bomb).
Here's the thing... if you added the mass of the two separate atoms, you DON'T get the same mass as the uranium atom you started out with. A fraction of the mass is destroyed.
That's where the E=mc(squared) comes in.
E = Energy
m= mass
c = the speed of light
Basically, the mass gets converted into energy. Because c(squared) is such a huge number, you can have a mass loss be very small and still get an enourmous amount of energy.
For instance, in the average yearly operation of a nuclear power plant, you will lose about six to eight ounces of matter.
I'm gonna cut this off here, but if I didn't explain that well I'll be happy to clarify. _________________ Life: a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% fatality rate.
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Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 1:57 pm Post subject: The Natural Philosophy Thread
