What Is An Atomic Bomb?

In 1939 a German scientist called Otto Hahn did something with uranium atoms. He split them. Hahn had been experimenting on firing neutrons at various elements. When he fired neutrons at Uranium, some atoms of Uranium-235 split into two new atoms and two neutrons. We call this atom splitting process fission. When uranium-235 atoms are split, enormous amount of energy is released. The sum of the masses of the atoms and neutrons produced is 0.2 m u less than the mass of one atom of U-235. This missing mass has been converted into energy, nuclear energy (also called atomic energy). As the fission of one U-235 produces two neutrons, these two neutrons split two more uranium atoms, to give four neutrons. A chain reaction is set off. In a large block of U-235, this results in an explosion. In a small block of U-235, neutrons escape from the surface of the block before producing fission, and an explosion doesn't occur. There is a critical mass below which a block of uranium will not make an atomic bomb. An atomic bomb consists of two blocks of U-235, each smaller than the critical mass. The bomb is detonated by firing one block into the other to make a single block which is larger than the critical mass.

It is a type of nuclear weapon. Which creates a big explosion but of lesser strength or intensity compared to nuclear bomb. Both radiates harmful radiations after explosions. ^6