does anyone know how the nuclear bomb(missile) work! can you explain exactly please?

Question

i want to know why when the nuclear missile explode,it will looks like a mushroom & what kind of things it destroy? how it works?
can you offer me a site that contains video trailer of nuclear strike!

Answer 1

All of these guys already answered how a nuclear weapon works and what one can destroy. I agree with them.

As for the mushroom cloud, it actually happens with other explosions, but not to the same extent. It is actually the fireball created by hte explosion, a few seconds after the actual blast.What happens is the fireball's heat will cause it to rise to the atmosphere, forming the "cap". However, some of the debris from the blast does not rise as fast a the fireball, forming the "stem".

Answer 2

Sure, I can explain how it works. It starts with a very fast chain reaction. If you are familiar with the concept of an atom, you know there is a nucleus made of neutrons and protons and this is surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Some atoms have nuclei that are relatively unstable meaning that if another neutron happens to bump into it, it may "split" the nucleus in half. When that occurs, the 2 new smaller nuclei try to assemble themselves into stable elements which they do by ejecting 2 or more neutrons and some amount of energy. This is the start of the "chain reaction." One neutron bumps into the nucleus of an atom and out comes some energy and 2 or more neutrons. These 2 free neutrons bump into 2 nuclei and this releases 4 or more neutrons plus more energy, etc.

If this happens relatively quickly in a confined space you can get an explosion with much more power than you would with conventional explosives. But getting 1) the required amount of unstable nuclei and 2) putting it together so it blows up when you want it to and 3) not killing yourself in the process is really hard.

If you are asking the question to try and understand the issues surrounding Iran and uranium enrichment, they are at stage 1, which they seem to have mastered. Steps 2 and 3 are easier by comparison.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

oh man.

nuclear weapons are the most frightening thing that mankind has ever developed.

there are two types: fusion weapons, and fission weapons. Fusion weapons are much more powerful than fission weapons, but they're both much much more powerful than the regular (chemical) weapons.

okay, here's how it works. atoms are made out of protons and neutrons, right? and packing the same number of protons and neutrons together in different ways, takes a different amount of energy. For instance, it takes MORE energy to build 2 hydrogen atoms than it does 1 helium atom, even though they both have the same number of nucleons. Nuclear weapons cause such dramatic explosions by using this difference in energy between 2 kinds of atoms.

Fission weapons take radioactive elements, and break them down into lighter elements: and in doing so cause a monstrous release in energy. This was the kind of bomb that was dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki. The level of devastation caused by a single bomb is unimaginable... our intuitions just cannot fathom the level of damage and death and suffering one of these bombs can cause.

Fusion weapons, on the other hand, take lighter elements, and put them together to make heavier elements. this reaction is MUCH more powerful. It's so powerful, in fact, that it's what keeps the sun glowing and hot! the "hydrogen bomb" has not ever been used on a city; however, this is the kind of bomb that the USSR and the USA faced off with during the cold-war.

The mushroom cloud is caused, not by anything particular to the nuclear weapons, but by the enormous heat of the explosion. Imagine it as a bubble of really hot air rising into the atmosphere.

Answer 4

A nuclear explosive is an explosive device that derives its energy from nuclear reactions. Almost all nuclear explosive devices that have been designed and produced, and the two that have actually been used, are nuclear weapons intended for warfare; see that article for more detail.

Other, non-warfare, applications for nuclear bombs have occasionally been proposed. For example, nuclear pulse propulsion is a form of spacecraft propulsion that would use nuclear bombs to provide impulse to a spacecraft. A similar application is the proposal to use nuclear bombs for asteroid deflection. From 1958 to 1965 The U. S government ran a project to design a nuclear bomb powered nuclear pulse rocket called Project Orion. Never built, this vessel would use repeated nuclear explosions to propel itself and was considered surprisingly practical. It is thought to be a feasible design for interstellar travel.

On Earth, nuclear explosives were once considered for use in large-scale excavation. A nuclear explosion could be used to create a harbor, or a mountain pass, or possibly large underground cavities for use as storage space. It was thought that detonating a nuclear bomb in oil-rich rock could make it possible to extract more from the deposit. From 1958 to 1973 the U. S government exploded 28 nuclear test-shots in a project called the Operation Plowshare. The purpose of the Operation Plowshare was to use peaceful nuclear explosions for moving and lifting enormous amounts of earth and rock during construction projects such as building reservoirs. The Soviet Union conducted a much more vigorous program of 122 nuclear tests, some with multiple devices, between 1965 and 1989 under the auspices of Program No. 7-Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy.

As controlled nuclear fusion has proven difficult to use as an energy source, an alternate proposal for producing fusion power has been to detonate fusion bombs inside very large underground chambers and then using the heat produced, which would be absorbed by a molten salt coolant which would also absorb neutrons. See the PACER project for more details.

Failure to meet objectives, along with the realization of the dangers of nuclear fallout and other residual radioactivity, and with the enactment of various agreements such as the Partial Test Ban Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty, has lead to the temination of most of these programs.

Answer 5

A nuclear fission bomb based on Uranium or Plutonium releases energy which is obtained on the breakdown of atoms.

A nuclear fusion bomb based on Hydrogen releases energy obtained by combining them.

Virtually nothing can withstand the fury of a nuclear weapon of a suitable magnitude.

Answer 6

There are two basic types of nuclear weapons. The first are weapons which produce their explosive energy through nuclear fission reactions alone. These are known colloquially as atomic bombs, atom bombs, A-bombs or The bomb. In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass—the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction—either by shooting one piece of subcritical material into another, or by compressing a subcritical mass with chemical explosives, at which points neutrons are injected and the reaction begins. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is ensuring that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range between the equivalent of less than a ton of TNT upwards to around 500,000 tons (500 kilotons) of TNT.

The second basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large amount of its energy through nuclear fusion reactions, and can be over a thousand times more powerful than fission bombs. These are known as hydrogen bombs, H-bombs, thermonuclear bombs, and fusion bombs. Only six countries—United States, Russia, France, United Kingdom, China and India—are known to possess hydrogen bombs. Hydrogen bombs work by utilizing the Teller-Ulam design, in which a fission bomb is detonated in a specially manufactured compartment adjacent to a fusion fuel. The gamma and X-rays of the fission explosion compress and heat a capsule of tritium, deuterium, or lithium deuteride starting a fusion reaction. Neutrons emitted by this fusion reaction can induce a final fission stage in a depleted uranium tamper surrounding the fusion fuel, increasing the yield considerably as well as the amount of nuclear fallout. Each of these components is known as a "stage", with the fission bomb as the "primary" and the fusion capsule as the "secondary". By chaining together numerous stages with increasing amounts of fusion fuel, thermonuclear weapons can be made to an almost arbitrary yield; the largest ever detonated (the Tsar Bomba of the USSR) released an energy equivalent to over 50 million tons (megatons) of TNT, though most modern weapons are nowhere near that large.

There are other types of nuclear weapons as well. For example, a boosted fission weapon is a fission bomb which increases its explosive yield through a small amount of fusion reactions, but it is not a hydrogen bomb. Some weapons are designed for special purposes; a neutron bomb is a nuclear weapon that yields a relatively small explosion but a relatively large amount of prompt radiation. The detonation of a nuclear weapon is accompanied by a blast of neutron radiation. Surrounding a nuclear weapon with suitable materials (such as cobalt or gold) creates a weapon known as a salted bomb. This device can produce exceptionally large quantities of radioactive contamination. Most variety in nuclear weapon design is in different yields of nuclear weapons for different types of purposes, and in manipulating design elements to attempt to make weapons extremely small.

Check out this site:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/mapablast.html