I just don’t really get how combining atoms gives off so much energy. I get nuclear fission, but I don’t really understand how forcing atoms to combine gives creates power. I’d think once you put enough energy into atoms to fuse them into one, bigger atom, it would continue to hold that power to stay together.
Comments
So it’s not just adding them together and getting a sum of the parts.
Basically, you’re not adding 1+1 to get 2.
You’re adding 1+1 to get 1.5 and 0.5 left over. Thats where the energy comes from
Each isotope has a certain mass loss per nucleon. Protons and neutrons have a certain normal mass, but when you combine them into atoms, those nucleons lose mass. Iron is the element with the highest mass loss per nucleon, so fusing smaller atoms eliminates mass, while splitting larger atoms eliminates mass. That mass has to go somewhere. It becomes energy based on the linear relationship E = mc^(2).
The process that happens in stars to turn hydrogen into helium takes several steps, but basically you start with 4 hydrogen atoms and end with one helium atom. As it turns out, one helium atom weighs very slightly less than 4 hydrogen atoms combined. That “missing mass” is where the energy comes from, in accordance with the famous equation E=mc^2.