Science Memes

11426 readers

2729 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

825

Desks (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Zron 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Nukes are crazy.

The mushroom cloud is actually caused by all the dust and debris that gets sucked up into the actual explosion.

Nuclear reactions happen at near light speed, and the heat from them does propagate at light speed.

[–] passiveaggressivesonar 1 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I still struggle to see how that sudden reaction can create so much pressure, a regular explosive is creating heavy byproducts and is expanding the gases already present in the explosive, but the sudden heating of a small uranium core and the air around it can create a bigger explosion than a bomb thousands of times heavier? Boggles my mind

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Yea, the concentration of energy trapped in matter is immense. People say matter is energy and e=mc^2 but you really have to do the calculations to see how much work that c squared is doing. A small grain of sand is probably more energy than the largest bomb, but the hard part is converting that matter into energy.

A hydrogen bomb (even bigger than a nuke,) converts less than a percent of the matter in the bomb to energy.

[–] Num10ck 2 points 2 weeks ago

energy=mass x the speed of light squared.
its like a spacetime sneeze.

[–] Zron 1 points 2 weeks ago

Well that’s the thing, conventional explosions convert chemical bonds into energy. Chemical bonds are fairly weak in the grand scheme of things.

Nuclear weapons convert nuclear bonds into energy. Atoms really like staying the atoms they currently are, so forcing them to convert all at once releases a ton of energy.