He obviously doesn't have extensive knowledge of nuclear weaponry. He didn't know about gallium in plutonium bombs. I would think most people interested in nuclear weapons would know about it. I do. It's usually about 4%.
If you want to know the real details of nuclear bomb Scott Manley did a mini series explaining them as detailed as possible. Prepare your brain though, its a lot to take in
It is not a threat anymore as there are way more cheaper and economical alternatives which I am sure we are well aware of by now....of mass destruction ! Which is the actual purpose.
And now we are too. It's all machine learning algorithms, the only human in the system will be the one pulling you aside "for an enhanced security check" - "sorry you're not allowed to know why you were flagged, just come quietly please".
Ya, but as soon as any gov agency would look a little into him, they'd no doubt mark him as not a threat. It's the backyard chemist and tinkerer with some disposable income that they keep an eye on. Lol
Whenever specific engineering details are discussed or printed about atom bombs (which are the simplest type of nuclear weapon), some critical (pun intended) information is usually left out or changed to prevent any random Joe or Jane Q. Terrorist from building one. This obviously doesn't stop states like North Korea or Iran from buying this knowledge, just nuclear enthusiasts who might buy fissile materials on the black market.
He has quite a sardonic tone when speaking of 'safety'. He's not all that comfortable really, he refers to the 'tragic' bombing of Nagasaki for example. The Prof. is great humanist
From what I understand, the field of metallurgy is as much an art as it is a science, in that making a 'logical prediction' of what combinations of elements will give an alloy a certain property is mostly trial & error, with the subsequent properties being understood only once that alloy has been made and tested.
I’m surprised he didn’t mention “Rufus” or the demon core as it’s sometimes called. It was the third core made and was on standby to be dropped on Japan if they had not surrendered after the second bomb, luckily it was not used. It did end up killing several scientists during later testing earning it the demon core moniker.
I believe it was supposed to be "Demo Core" but a rather fitting typo occurred and after what happened the name stuck. The core was melted down and used as material for new atomic weapons.
Professor! I havn't seen a recommendation in a while and was getting concerned. I am so glad to see you healthy and bringing us more great content! Keep teaching the world
No gona lie, I think all nuclear scientists, students, and really anyone who's really interested in radioactive chemistry is probably on some kind of watchlist somewhere.
It is actually considerably harder for undergrads who study nuclear engineering to get US student visas than undergrads who study, say, CS or math. So they are certainly on *some* lists.
in the UK Professor isnt a title given to any uni teacher, its a title which is reserved for the best of the field and many unis might have one per department. a professor of chemistry, even of inorganic chemistry as Prof Poliakoff is is going to be on every large nations list of important people. His achievements as taken from Nottingham uni's website listed bellow Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff CBE FRS FREng studied at King's College, Cambridge, B.A (1969) and Ph.D. (1973) under the supervision of J. J. Turner FRS on the Matrix Isolation of Large Molecules. In 1972, he was appointed Research/Senior Research Officer in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1979, he moved to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. Promotion to Reader in Inorganic Chemistry and then to Professor of Chemistry followed in 1985 and 1991 respectively. In addition, he is Honorary Professor of Chemistry at Moscow State University. From 1994-99, he held an EPSRC/Royal Academy of Engineering Clean Technology Fellowship at Nottingham. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (2002), of the RSC (2002) and of the IChemE (2004). He was awarded CBE (2008) for "Services to Sciences", and knighted in 2015 for "Services to the Chemical Sciences". He was made Honorary Member of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia (2008) and Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2011) and Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society (2015). In 2012, He was elected a Fellow of the Academia Europiaea and, in 2013, Associate Fellow of TWAS, the World Academy of Science and Associate Member of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences (2014), Honorary Fellow of the RSC (2015), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016) and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2017). He was a Council Member of the IChemE (2009-13) and Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society (2011-16) In 2018, he was appointed Honorary Professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and was awarded the 2019 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public by the American Chemical Society.. His research interests are focussed on supercritical fluids, continuous reactions and their applications to Green Chemistry
It’s not a serious list if there is one. Unless you’re attempting to obtain certain things in large amounts there is really no concern at all. Cody got into a little trouble but he’s fine now. Reading about how bombs work isn’t that big of a deal. Every kid I knew growing up owned a copy of The Way Things Work by David Macaulay. If we’re all on a list, the list doesn’t matter.
Had the good fortune of being taught chemistry at nottingham by Prof. Poliakoff. Discovering these videos has brought the feelings of nostalgia back. Thanks to Brady and Prof for making these!
@ Guest Informant Correct. Most of the films from that time period were silent. If you're interested, both atomcentral and Atomic Tests Channel youtube channels have a lot of archived footage of fission and fusion weapons tests.
This is probably filmed from quite some distance, yet we see and hear the explosion at the same time. So either the sound is shifted or completely fake.
The story behind that "Atom Bombs" book is truly fascinating. It was compiled by a truck driver from Milwaukee named John Coster-Mullen and is self-published. I corresponded directly with the author to buy my copy. It's incredibly detailed and painstakingly researched.
In the Fat Man bomb, when the bomb exploded, approximately 2.2 pounds of that plutonium underwent fission, but only about 1 gram of mass was turned to an immense amount of energy (E=mc^2). In fission, only a small fraction of the plutonium atom's mass is actually becomes energy.
Not only amazing, but very scary. If a device works first time, second time, third time.... Maybe it's not too hard to make, that's the scary part to me.
So glad I found this channel and Professor Poliakoff. I’ve been going through the archives. I suspect the University students adore him. His knowledge and love of chemistry and physics and all manner of subjects is infectious.
Thank you Professor my 13 year old Grandson loves your videos. I have been teaching him at home and he always says lets watch a Periodic Video. You are making a difficult time much more enjoyable. May you live long and keep us informed.
I'm kind of a nuclear weapons nut, and I think that's a really excellent book. Very accessible to the non-scientist reader, however - not technical at all. Full of colorful personalities and anecdotes, it's actually an entertaining read.
Pretty sure I saw it on his bookshelf (because I was looking for it) but the cover art is different than the US version. Agreed, Rhodes did a nice piece of work on both books. It's not perfect (given the secrecy surrounding the topic, it's completely understandable) but it does a really nice job of explaining the history of the subject and the technical details without being patronizing.
I'm so used to modern element synthesis being in the realm of creating maybe half a dozen atoms of a new element, I still find it mind boggling that during the war they were able to create kilogrammes of plutonium, an element which simply does not exist in nature.
Of course there are a few details that help in the case of Plutonium. For one, it's fairly stable, so you can make some and set it aside while making more. Then of course it can be bred directly with Uranium, which occurs naturally. The extraction of both Uranium 235 and Plutonium from the dangerous environments they each come from is the really hard part.
Plutonium can be made at a larger scale than most other synthetic elements since it is a byproduct of neutron capture and not a particle accelerator like most heavier elements and like someone else said it is fairly stable so it doesnt decay faster than it can be produced. It likely once existed naturally as a primordial element but with a half life of a maximum of several million years it likely has all decayed into insignificant quantities in our solar system since most matter here is several billion years old. Plutonium when present in significant quantities can be chemically extracted from spent nuclear material since it is a seperate element with its own chemical properties.
Plutonium 244 does actually exist in nature. Mass spectroscpy of pre-cambrian Bastnasite has shown it to be present. Plutonium 239 and it's daughters are also present in the Oklo Gabon natural fission reactor.
I've spent years studying the physical sciences (though only hobby level, not university) and i have also studied nuclear physics and atomic weapons quite a bit, really thought i knew my stuff, but I've never heard about Gallium being used in the plutonium. Fascinating video, thanks guys. Its not often i get to learn something new about science from TH-cam videos anymore.
I would imagine the issue with aluminum over gallium is not the neutron production, but rather that Aluminum 27 (which is what happens when aluminum captures a neutron) is a very powerful gamma emitter and could damage the electronics and make it difficult for people to work around
@White Tower Woodworking because people care about their particular favorite old person enough to performatively worry about them during a pandemic, but not enough to actually wear a face mask and practice social distancing during that same pandemic
Small correction: The result was the fission of about 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of the 6.19 kilograms (13.6 lb) of plutonium in the pit, i.e. of about 16% of the fissile material present. 1 gram (0.035 oz) of matter in the bomb is converted into the active energy of heat and radiation, releasing the energy equivalent to the detonation of 21 kilotons of TNT or 88 terajoules.
@@fpm1979 Actually it's still about 1 kg of U-235 that fissioned in Little Boy (actually more like 0.75 kg). It's inefficient because the gun-type configuration wastes the rest of the 64 kg, as you point out.
@@rlewis1946 I believe the max efficiency we've achieved is around 50%. Of course modern weapons use thermonuclear fusion to achieve most of their yield so it's not as cut-and-dry.
Small point; but WAY more then 1 gram of the plutonium split, most estimates I found put it at about 1 kilogram. The 1 gram is a basically the mass to energy conversion calculation.
@@gilberthernandez804 I mean I guess not. But given this is an educational science channel the difference between 'the amount of material that underwent fission' and 'the amount of mass converted to energy' is pretty important IMO
you beat me to it too, for trinity site, it was about 0.9 kilograms fissioned - 18.6 kilotons at Trinity site 8 * 4.184TJ/kiloton / 83.61 TJ/kg 239Pu split,
Yeah I was gonna say, the efficiency was just under 20%, so that would definitely be more than 1 gram. Implosion designs are the most efficient fission weapons. Even Little Boy using highly inefficient gun method still burned approx. 0.91 kgs from the 64 kgs of U-235. Another thing is that not all of the fission energy was produced by Pu-239. In fact, close to 20% (I think 17% exact) was fast fissioned U-238 in the tamper. Also approx. 14.3 tons of U-238 released energy as a result of photofission from the gamma radiation emitted by Pu-239 fission according to a published peer reviewed paper. Now if only they had thought of making the core hollow first instead of solid and replaced the initiator with a 50/50 D-T gas mixture in the pit, they would have had a much bigger blast with the same mass of Pu-239. Even if they kept the solid core arrangement, but just spaced out the tamper a couple inches outside the core then they would have had a greater yield due to the longer confinement time before becoming subcritical. Maybe they never would have used the bomb in war after seeing a 50+ kt explosion. I'd doubt it though.
What the professor doesn't know about this is approximately equal to what most people do know about it. It's mind boggling and amazing that it works at all.
One book abaout the topic I found really interessting is "Comand and Controll". It is a really gripping book detailing the whole history of nuclear bombs as well as all the exidents that happend (on the American side, not enough data for the UdSSR).
i lived in Nagasaki for 3 years, and there are still stone temples and statues charred black on one side from the explosion all those years ago, as well as trees at those temples that still remain mangled but alive. at the actual epicenter, there's a museum with a glass floor, showing you the damage done underneath, and photos of hundreds of civilian people, children pregnant women, etc, with their skin peeling off their bodies, and limbs falling off. it's an absolutely horrific weapon, and i pray that no nuclear weapons will ever be used again.
I have a signed copy of the Atom Bombs book, it's a fascinating collection of declassified letters/drawings/etc from the nuclear weapon program. Another book I'd recommend is "How to Photograph and Atomic Bomb" by Peter Kuran. The technical hurdles of filming and photographing the tests were amazing.
I have worked with one of the “bomb builders” - Dr. Henry Linschitz- who worked on the chemistry of implosion and who helped assemble the Pu bombs. He did address the moral implications of the bombs extensively.
To answer the question "Would I have worked on nuclear weapons?", the answer is almost certainly yes. Not because of any moral failure on the professor's part, but because *very* few people knew what they were working on. My grandfather was horrified to find out that the reactor buildings he had built in his role as a civil engineer were not for providing clean energy to people, but instead for enriching the fissile material for bombs.
@@StonedDragons What you stated is true but............Jesse drake did say that the buildings were actually for "enriching fissile material for bombs". That's pretty specific.
"Only about 1 gram disintegrated..." Doing E=mc^2 on one gram, I get 9x10^13 joules. One kiloton TNT is about 4x10^12 joules so the gram weight of mass is about 20kT TNT. So I think rather it is more like 1 gm mass was converted to energy and only about 20% of the Plutonium fissioned which was maybe 1380 grams. Anyway, Gallium helped make an allotrope that blew the town down.
You should take into account the fact that uranium and plutonium atoms fissioned in a bomb don't completely break down into energy. They go from one big atom in a very high energy state, to two smaller lower energy atoms, that is the fission products.The two smaller atoms occupy a sum total energy state lower than the original atom, creating a differential and liberating the excess energy. The energy liberated in a nuclear explosion isn't pure E=MC squared. It's basically the same effect as a chemical explosion, only dealing with nuclear physics rather than molecules and chemical processes, instead of breaking down molecules to lower energy states you're breaking down actual atoms. So while it does give access to FAR greater quantities of energy, its not a pure conversion of matter to energy. The atoms themselves aren't evaporated out of existence leaving behind only their energy.
Joseph... Correct. I did not want to make the reply excessively long. 1 gm is only the converted mass, a little bit from each fission. Fissioned weight of plutonium would be much more...1800gms about.
Thank you! 50 years ago in 7th grade science class I pestered the instructor about beryillum and pollonium at the core. He said you will die early from a heart attack. I spent weeks in libraries trying to find the answer. Great thanks for this explanation
Polonium is an exceptionally prolific emitter of alpha particles. Alpha particles have nearly zero ability to penetrate other materials, yet are capable of knocking neutrons from beryllium. In the initiator of the bomb, these two materials are separated by a thin foil. The outer surface is believed to be dimpled to promote turbulence, and therefore mixing at the moment of implosion. Implosion mixes the metals and releases a shower of neutrons. The number of neutrons cascades in the chain reaction splitting atoms until heat and pressure become great enough to overcome the inertia of the tamper and resulting disassembly.
@DIV1NITAL Possibe. I think India and the CCP will nuke each other first, and we might have to step in. Day by day the CCP is menacing every other country in their region more and more openly. I think the Wuhan virus was purposefully vectored to the west to catalyze the expansion of the CCP collective--not that they necessarily engineered the virus. It may have just been a naturally emerging weapon of convenience.
John Coster-Mullen. It is a very interesting book because some of the information in it was not declassified before the book was published and was discovered by the author because he was able to see inside some bombs which are in museums (the nuclear material had been removed but they neglected to remove all the parts which had been classified and there were some openings in the case)
Excellent ! Nonetheless, please note that the mass of plutonium that is fissioned in a bomb is around 1000 grams. The 1 (one) gram that is mentioned in the video may come from a related Wikipedia article, where there is a "K" letter missing before the "g". It then reads gram, but should be "Kg"(Kilogram)
Gallium stabilization also prevents phase changes that can occur with pure plutonium. Alpha-phase plutonium, aside from the difficulties with its mechanical properties, will shift to a higher density phase quite readily. The use of gallium does greatly improve the handling characteristics in casting and machining and it is also phase stable over a far broader temperature range than alpha phase.
Rad Derry Correct. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilian, not military, targets. They were “shock and awe” attacks. This was possible by dehumanizing them during the war via propaganda. Keep in mind that US citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent were imprisoned illegally.
It has been said several times in the comments, this figure is actually inaccurate. 1g was converted into energy by e=mc², so the fission products weight 1g less than the plutonium that reacted, but actually ~20% of the plutonium fissioned so a bit more than 1kg.
Nuclear bomb science is fascinating. Like they had bombs that you could literally dial in how big of an explosion you wanted to cause. Or how the Castle Bravo test was several times bigger than anticipated, because the casing material thought to be inert reacted unpredictably and actually enhanced the explosive yield from 5-6 megatons to 15 megatons.
Only between the US and USSR. But that balance assumes that both parties are rational actors. As we've seen recently, not everybody who gets into power is rational.
Modern implosion bombs aren’t perfectly spherical though, they’re more like an egg shape so they fit within the profile of an ICBM’s re-entry vehicle that’s basically a cone. And also to note, the explosive lenses aren't set off at exactly the same time as they did in legacy ones.
Is it possible for you to take us on a tour of your library's worth of books. I would love to see your favorites in your collection or the ones you refer back to the most.
Prof Poliakoff, I love your video perspective here because it totally makes you look like the Swedish Chef 🤣🤣🤣🤣... Cannot be unseen! Thanks for making my day, love your work!
I don't know what's scarier: the Professor's extensive knowledge of nuclear weaponry, or the fact that Brady thinks in Comic Sans.
He obviously doesn't have extensive knowledge of nuclear weaponry. He didn't know about gallium in plutonium bombs. I would think most people interested in nuclear weapons would know about it. I do. It's usually about 4%.
If you want to know the real details of nuclear bomb Scott Manley did a mini series explaining them as detailed as possible. Prepare your brain though, its a lot to take in
Definitely the latter.
It is not a threat anymore as there are way more cheaper and economical alternatives which I am sure we are well aware of by now....of mass destruction ! Which is the actual purpose.
Probably the combination :D
He is most certainly on a list.
Yea, but the other one. Whom to call in case of emergency.
Wasn’t he knighted?
Yes. My subscription list
And now we are too. It's all machine learning algorithms, the only human in the system will be the one pulling you aside "for an enhanced security check" - "sorry you're not allowed to know why you were flagged, just come quietly please".
Ya, but as soon as any gov agency would look a little into him, they'd no doubt mark him as not a threat.
It's the backyard chemist and tinkerer with some disposable income that they keep an eye on. Lol
Brady: "Should I be worried about this?"
Nah, Poliakoff is a good evil-scientist.
@MichaelKingsfordGray 😂
The Professor is on my watch list.
Very clever!
Mine too 😏
I've been a subscriber for years. 😀
"You can get a bit more Plutonium in your bomb and it'll still be safe."
Me: This guy is too comfortable.
Should I be worried about this ??😂😂😂😂
"Safe" I think, is relitive.
Whenever specific engineering details are discussed or printed about atom bombs (which are the simplest type of nuclear weapon), some critical (pun intended) information is usually left out or changed to prevent any random Joe or Jane Q. Terrorist from building one.
This obviously doesn't stop states like North Korea or Iran from buying this knowledge, just nuclear enthusiasts who might buy fissile materials on the black market.
@@turkosicsaba The Radioactive Boy Scout would like a word.
He has quite a sardonic tone when speaking of 'safety'. He's not all that comfortable really, he refers to the 'tragic' bombing of Nagasaki for example. The Prof. is great humanist
I find alloying, the mixing of a small amount of one metal with another to significantly change its properties intriguing.
Yep and it is ridiculous sometimes how little makes how big of a difference.
Personally I just find it really alloying
From what I understand, the field of metallurgy is as much an art as it is a science, in that making a 'logical prediction' of what combinations of elements will give an alloy a certain property is mostly trial & error, with the subsequent properties being understood only once that alloy has been made and tested.
You know what?
Iron + few %age of carbon = steel
And this game can go on and go on.
It's actually very common and casual.
It's common. Solder only melts at so low because it's an alloy. Tin and lead have both higher melting points then both of them mixed
I’m surprised he didn’t mention “Rufus” or the demon core as it’s sometimes called. It was the third core made and was on standby to be dropped on Japan if they had not surrendered after the second bomb, luckily it was not used. It did end up killing several scientists during later testing earning it the demon core moniker.
Wonder if they'll do a video on it?
It's so widely known though. Spend a day on reddit. You can't miss the people constantly linking the wikipedia page.
After the accident they no longer trusted it as a bomb core since it had gone partially critical.
@@Ixions They still detonated it iirc
I believe it was supposed to be "Demo Core" but a rather fitting typo occurred and after what happened the name stuck.
The core was melted down and used as material for new atomic weapons.
Professor! I havn't seen a recommendation in a while and was getting concerned. I am so glad to see you healthy and bringing us more great content! Keep teaching the world
I really love this man, ive developed an emotional attachment to him. I really appreciate his love and passion for the sciences
Me too .
I’ve really enjoyed Periodic Videos for the past 10 years. I hope you keep cranking these out.
No gona lie, I think all nuclear scientists, students, and really anyone who's really interested in radioactive chemistry is probably on some kind of watchlist somewhere.
I'll feign interest. It's nice to know I'm on someone's list after all :D
Just radioactive chemists? All chemists are because of our potential to pull a 'breaking bad'...
It is actually considerably harder for undergrads who study nuclear engineering to get US student visas than undergrads who study, say, CS or math. So they are certainly on *some* lists.
in the UK Professor isnt a title given to any uni teacher, its a title which is reserved for the best of the field and many unis might have one per department. a professor of chemistry, even of inorganic chemistry as Prof Poliakoff is is going to be on every large nations list of important people.
His achievements as taken from Nottingham uni's website listed bellow
Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff CBE FRS FREng studied at King's College, Cambridge, B.A (1969) and Ph.D. (1973) under the supervision of J. J. Turner FRS on the Matrix Isolation of Large Molecules. In 1972, he was appointed Research/Senior Research Officer in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1979, he moved to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. Promotion to Reader in Inorganic Chemistry and then to Professor of Chemistry followed in 1985 and 1991 respectively. In addition, he is Honorary Professor of Chemistry at Moscow State University. From 1994-99, he held an EPSRC/Royal Academy of Engineering Clean Technology Fellowship at Nottingham. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (2002), of the RSC (2002) and of the IChemE (2004). He was awarded CBE (2008) for "Services to Sciences", and knighted in 2015 for "Services to the Chemical Sciences". He was made Honorary Member of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia (2008) and Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2011) and Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society (2015). In 2012, He was elected a Fellow of the Academia Europiaea and, in 2013, Associate Fellow of TWAS, the World Academy of Science and Associate Member of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences (2014), Honorary Fellow of the RSC (2015), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016) and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2017). He was a Council Member of the IChemE (2009-13) and Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society (2011-16) In 2018, he was appointed Honorary Professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and was awarded the 2019 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public by the American Chemical Society.. His research interests are focussed on supercritical fluids, continuous reactions and their applications to Green Chemistry
It’s not a serious list if there is one. Unless you’re attempting to obtain certain things in large amounts there is really no concern at all. Cody got into a little trouble but he’s fine now. Reading about how bombs work isn’t that big of a deal. Every kid I knew growing up owned a copy of The Way Things Work by David Macaulay. If we’re all on a list, the list doesn’t matter.
Had the good fortune of being taught chemistry at nottingham by Prof. Poliakoff. Discovering these videos has brought the feelings of nostalgia back. Thanks to Brady and Prof for making these!
1:30 Presumably the sound is added on that video as there would be a long delay.
@
Guest Informant Correct. Most of the films from that time period were silent. If you're interested, both atomcentral and Atomic Tests Channel youtube channels have a lot of archived footage of fission and fusion weapons tests.
This is probably filmed from quite some distance, yet we see and hear the explosion at the same time. So either the sound is shifted or completely fake.
It's foley. As a side note, nearly all slow motion videos use fake sounds too.
@@iancanuckistan2244 Yes, I remember now. I think I watched a playlist from there one time. Just test after test after test.
Also, I have read that the actual sound is a thud from the shock wave passing and not the crackling booming roar that is normally dubbed in.
He's a chemist with a PhD, he is already on a list.
He's on Trump's list for believing in science.
He's near the top of VIP chemist lists.
The story behind that "Atom Bombs" book is truly fascinating. It was compiled by a truck driver from Milwaukee named John Coster-Mullen and is self-published. I corresponded directly with the author to buy my copy. It's incredibly detailed and painstakingly researched.
I just wish that professor would be immortal
Edit:- Thanks for 100 likes
Yes sad to see he's getting so old but he's still smart as can be
The secret is to stop aging first. Otherwise being immortal isn't very glamorous.
If anyone can find a way to be immortal (other than the Queen) it would be him.
@@smallsthetimelord4066 The Queen was born in '26...
...BC
Mission of our age; make the professor (and us, but mostly the professor) immortal.
In the Fat Man bomb, when the bomb exploded, approximately 2.2 pounds of that plutonium underwent fission, but only about 1 gram of mass was turned to an immense amount of energy (E=mc^2). In fission, only a small fraction of the plutonium atom's mass is actually becomes energy.
I never knew i liked chemistry until i found this channel. 😁
It's amazing that they could actually figure out how to put all these pieces together in the right way and in the right proportions to create a bomb.
Not only amazing, but very scary. If a device works first time, second time, third time....
Maybe it's not too hard to make, that's the scary part to me.
So glad I found this channel and Professor Poliakoff. I’ve been going through the archives. I suspect the University students adore him. His knowledge and love of chemistry and physics and all manner of subjects is infectious.
Glad to see the professor is doing ok! He’s the best!
Thank you Professor my 13 year old Grandson loves your videos. I have been teaching him at home and he always says lets watch a Periodic Video. You are making a difficult time much more enjoyable. May you live long and keep us informed.
Oh boy, ionising radiation time
00:30 I strongly recommend Richard Rhodes's _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ (which, for some reason, I cannot identify on your shelf, here).
Agreed, it is an excellent book.
I'm kind of a nuclear weapons nut, and I think that's a really excellent book. Very accessible to the non-scientist reader, however - not technical at all. Full of colorful personalities and anecdotes, it's actually an entertaining read.
To be followed by "Dark Sun", Richard Rhodes' history of the making of thermonuclear weapons.
Pretty sure I saw it on his bookshelf (because I was looking for it) but the cover art is different than the US version. Agreed, Rhodes did a nice piece of work on both books. It's not perfect (given the secrecy surrounding the topic, it's completely understandable) but it does a really nice job of explaining the history of the subject and the technical details without being patronizing.
Is this where we sign up for the do not fly list?
I dislike the idea of being stuck in an airborne tube for several hours, and hope never to have to experience it.
_"Dr. Strangelove, do we have anything like that in the works?"_
I would put Gallium in the title
Yes!
to prevent flaking?
but just a little bit.
ᴳᵃˡˡᶦᵘᵐ
The inner workings of these things is absolutely fascinating, but also really terrifying. Thanks for the video, was very neat!
The countdown sequence is magical. I love it.
Too long and loud and no volume controls work outside of muting the entire site temporarily from the browser. I hate it.
I'll risk being on a list to watch Periodic Videos. Prof Sir Martyn is definitely one of the most interesting teachers known to mankind.
I'm so used to modern element synthesis being in the realm of creating maybe half a dozen atoms of a new element, I still find it mind boggling that during the war they were able to create kilogrammes of plutonium, an element which simply does not exist in nature.
They were well motivated.
Of course there are a few details that help in the case of Plutonium. For one, it's fairly stable, so you can make some and set it aside while making more. Then of course it can be bred directly with Uranium, which occurs naturally. The extraction of both Uranium 235 and Plutonium from the dangerous environments they each come from is the really hard part.
Plutonium can be made at a larger scale than most other synthetic elements since it is a byproduct of neutron capture and not a particle accelerator like most heavier elements and like someone else said it is fairly stable so it doesnt decay faster than it can be produced. It likely once existed naturally as a primordial element but with a half life of a maximum of several million years it likely has all decayed into insignificant quantities in our solar system since most matter here is several billion years old. Plutonium when present in significant quantities can be chemically extracted from spent nuclear material since it is a seperate element with its own chemical properties.
Plutonium 244 does actually exist in nature. Mass spectroscpy of pre-cambrian Bastnasite has shown it to be present. Plutonium 239 and it's daughters are also present in the Oklo Gabon natural fission reactor.
What about our depreciating helium Supply?
I've spent years studying the physical sciences (though only hobby level, not university) and i have also studied nuclear physics and atomic weapons quite a bit, really thought i knew my stuff, but I've never heard about Gallium being used in the plutonium. Fascinating video, thanks guys.
Its not often i get to learn something new about science from TH-cam videos anymore.
Years studying and didnt know this?? Did you read one line of the book a day?
I would imagine the issue with aluminum over gallium is not the neutron production, but rather that Aluminum 27 (which is what happens when aluminum captures a neutron) is a very powerful gamma emitter and could damage the electronics and make it difficult for people to work around
Dr. Poliakoff! You’re being watched! Brady, I really like your clever edits. I can’t get enough of these videos!
great to see the prof is holding up well. Stay safe!
@White Tower Woodworking because people care about their particular favorite old person enough to performatively worry about them during a pandemic, but not enough to actually wear a face mask and practice social distancing during that same pandemic
Hi! Iranian scientist here, thanks a lot ! I will try this method next time!
Small correction:
The result was the fission of about 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of the 6.19 kilograms (13.6 lb) of plutonium in the pit, i.e. of about 16% of the fissile material present. 1 gram (0.035 oz) of matter in the bomb is converted into the active energy of heat and radiation, releasing the energy equivalent to the detonation of 21 kilotons of TNT or 88 terajoules.
Yup, that's the actual numbers.
I believe only one gramme of the 60kg of Uranium was split in the gun-type weapon Little Boy. A very wasteful but simple and reliable design.
@@fpm1979 Actually it's still about 1 kg of U-235 that fissioned in Little Boy (actually more like 0.75 kg). It's inefficient because the gun-type configuration wastes the rest of the 64 kg, as you point out.
Naturrien What is the efficiency of today’s nuclear weapons?
@@rlewis1946 I believe the max efficiency we've achieved is around 50%. Of course modern weapons use thermonuclear fusion to achieve most of their yield so it's not as cut-and-dry.
No gallium is needed for the professor to blow my mind
Droping this video in 2020 seems so fitting.
Alex I’m glad you’re having fun “droping”
Small point; but WAY more then 1 gram of the plutonium split, most estimates I found put it at about 1 kilogram. The 1 gram is a basically the mass to energy conversion calculation.
If you're the one that the bomb is being "dropped on" it really doesn't make much difference does it???? But technically I'd have to do more research.
@@gilberthernandez804 I mean I guess not. But given this is an educational science channel the difference between 'the amount of material that underwent fission' and 'the amount of mass converted to energy' is pretty important IMO
You beat me to it. I was going to say the same thing.
you beat me to it too, for trinity site, it was about 0.9 kilograms fissioned - 18.6 kilotons at Trinity site 8 * 4.184TJ/kiloton / 83.61 TJ/kg 239Pu split,
Yeah I was gonna say, the efficiency was just under 20%, so that would definitely be more than 1 gram. Implosion designs are the most efficient fission weapons. Even Little Boy using highly inefficient gun method still burned approx. 0.91 kgs from the 64 kgs of U-235. Another thing is that not all of the fission energy was produced by Pu-239. In fact, close to 20% (I think 17% exact) was fast fissioned U-238 in the tamper. Also approx. 14.3 tons of U-238 released energy as a result of photofission from the gamma radiation emitted by Pu-239 fission according to a published peer reviewed paper.
Now if only they had thought of making the core hollow first instead of solid and replaced the initiator with a 50/50 D-T gas mixture in the pit, they would have had a much bigger blast with the same mass of Pu-239. Even if they kept the solid core arrangement, but just spaced out the tamper a couple inches outside the core then they would have had a greater yield due to the longer confinement time before becoming subcritical. Maybe they never would have used the bomb in war after seeing a 50+ kt explosion. I'd doubt it though.
I think you should do a video on the "Demon core".
I believe Dark Docs done one on the demon core.
What the professor doesn't know about this is approximately equal to what most people do know about it. It's mind boggling and amazing that it works at all.
🎯I love the chronology and the complexity of short time chemical reactions ! Very interesting Thanks a lot 🤘👨🏫🎸🎸🎸
Periodic videos and bombs...my day has been made.
One book abaout the topic I found really interessting is "Comand and Controll". It is a really gripping book detailing the whole history of nuclear bombs as well as all the exidents that happend (on the American side, not enough data for the UdSSR).
Mike518Mike you have a typo
i lived in Nagasaki for 3 years, and there are still stone temples and statues charred black on one side from the explosion all those years ago, as well as trees at those temples that still remain mangled but alive.
at the actual epicenter, there's a museum with a glass floor, showing you the damage done underneath, and photos of hundreds of civilian people, children pregnant women, etc, with their skin peeling off their bodies, and limbs falling off. it's an absolutely horrific weapon, and i pray that no nuclear weapons will ever be used again.
I read that about a month ago. Great book. If you're interested in nuclear history you should check out James mahaffey and his atomic series.
I have a signed copy of the Atom Bombs book, it's a fascinating collection of declassified letters/drawings/etc from the nuclear weapon program. Another book I'd recommend is "How to Photograph and Atomic Bomb" by Peter Kuran. The technical hurdles of filming and photographing the tests were amazing.
Who wrote the Atom Bombs book? Tried to find the book in the video, comments and online but no luck.
"Should I be worried about this?"😂😂😂
NiCe LiKe cOuNt.
(69)
No. Constructing implosive lenses is very hard, but refining weapon-grade Plutonium is even harder. If it wasn't really hard, everyone would have one.
@DIV1NITAL doesn't anyone get that trump is anti war. War is for swamp creatures.
@DIV1NITAL This aged well😅
All we need is a little plutonium Doc!
Next video:
"That part of the shelf is about how to hijack a plane, but mostly history part"
I feel like I'm on a list just for clicking this video. He is definitely on a list.
Do something about the theorize "continent of stability" and its ud-matter.
I have worked with one of the “bomb builders” - Dr. Henry Linschitz- who worked on the chemistry of implosion and who helped assemble the Pu bombs. He did address the moral implications of the bombs extensively.
To answer the question "Would I have worked on nuclear weapons?", the answer is almost certainly yes. Not because of any moral failure on the professor's part, but because *very* few people knew what they were working on. My grandfather was horrified to find out that the reactor buildings he had built in his role as a civil engineer were not for providing clean energy to people, but instead for enriching the fissile material for bombs.
I worked on them and it was really interesting and fun....but extremely dangerous!!!!
Dark Dragon Dragoon The nuclear physics that you and I know today were not known by your average civil engineer in the 1940's and 50's
@@StonedDragons What you stated is true but............Jesse drake did say that the buildings were actually for "enriching fissile material for bombs". That's pretty specific.
@@gilberthernandez804 To be clear, my grandfather wasn't involved in the actual reactor design, just the buildings the reactors were housed in.
Reactors don't enrich
Noticed Plutopia on the shelf. Well worth a read to anyone interested in this.
Just by looking at the waveform of Bradys t-shirt i can tell it has the most exceedingly awesome guitar solo.
Doc..its Marty you gotta get me back to the future !!
Love the videos your awesome
"Mostly on the history" of atom bombs...
What eh... are the other atom bomb books about?
shhhhh lol
They could include thermonuclear bombs, Cobalt bombs, neutron bombs...
Knowledge shared with so much loveliness, kindness and decency. An example to aspire to.
"Only about 1 gram disintegrated..." Doing E=mc^2 on one gram, I get 9x10^13 joules. One kiloton TNT is about 4x10^12 joules so the gram weight of mass is about 20kT TNT. So I think rather it is more like 1 gm mass was converted to energy and only about 20% of the Plutonium fissioned which was maybe 1380 grams. Anyway, Gallium helped make an allotrope that blew the town down.
You should take into account the fact that uranium and plutonium atoms fissioned in a bomb don't completely break down into energy. They go from one big atom in a very high energy state, to two smaller lower energy atoms, that is the fission products.The two smaller atoms occupy a sum total energy state lower than the original atom, creating a differential and liberating the excess energy. The energy liberated in a nuclear explosion isn't pure E=MC squared. It's basically the same effect as a chemical explosion, only dealing with nuclear physics rather than molecules and chemical processes, instead of breaking down molecules to lower energy states you're breaking down actual atoms. So while it does give access to FAR greater quantities of energy, its not a pure conversion of matter to energy. The atoms themselves aren't evaporated out of existence leaving behind only their energy.
Joseph... Correct. I did not want to make the reply excessively long. 1 gm is only the converted mass, a little bit from each fission. Fissioned weight of plutonium would be much more...1800gms about.
Thank you! 50 years ago in 7th grade science class I pestered the instructor about beryillum and pollonium at the core. He said you will die early from a heart attack. I spent weeks in libraries trying to find the answer. Great thanks for this explanation
Polonium is an exceptionally prolific emitter of alpha particles. Alpha particles have nearly zero ability to penetrate other materials, yet are capable of knocking neutrons from beryllium. In the initiator of the bomb, these two materials are separated by a thin foil. The outer surface is believed to be dimpled to promote turbulence, and therefore mixing at the moment of implosion. Implosion mixes the metals and releases a shower of neutrons. The number of neutrons cascades in the chain reaction splitting atoms until heat and pressure become great enough to overcome the inertia of the tamper and resulting disassembly.
The "Neurton gun" laboratory device for neutron flux exposure experiments is actually a polonium 210-beryllium 9 neutron source.
_Kim Jong-Un has entered the chat_
North Korea doesnt have bombs anymore, South Korea is the one
gabsr
Ha! You honestly believe North Korea would actually disarm or remove their nuclear arms entirely?
@DIV1NITAL Possibe. I think India and the CCP will nuke each other first, and we might have to step in. Day by day the CCP is menacing every other country in their region more and more openly. I think the Wuhan virus was purposefully vectored to the west to catalyze the expansion of the CCP collective--not that they necessarily engineered the virus. It may have just been a naturally emerging weapon of convenience.
@Lotad-Is-Hungry ! its october..
Sht
Does anyone know the author of the book the professor references (atom bombs) because I can't seem to find it anywhere online
John Coster-Mullen. It is a very interesting book because some of the information in it was not declassified before the book was published and was discovered by the author because he was able to see inside some bombs which are in museums (the nuclear material had been removed but they neglected to remove all the parts which had been classified and there were some openings in the case)
Great video! Thanks
I do love anything with Professor Martyn Poliakoff
Well, we're all on a watch list now, possibly Eric Swalwell's.
Fartigas?
Excellent ! Nonetheless, please note that the mass of plutonium that is fissioned in a bomb is around 1000 grams. The 1 (one) gram that is mentioned in the video may come from a related Wikipedia article, where there is a "K" letter missing before the "g". It then reads gram, but should be "Kg"(Kilogram)
How do I get off the watchlist for watching this video?
nulcear explosions are just..mesmerizing.
Dont worry FBI, im watching this for educational purposes
Same 😮🎉
Dear Prof, your next video can wait. Please take care of yourself. The tremors worry me. Never mind the videos. Health comes first.
That ending hahahaha
Well the list our Professor, excuse me, Sir Professor is on is far better than the list I have been on for decades. Rhymes with pit
Nothing tragic that bomb saved more lives than it took.
Gallium stabilization also prevents phase changes that can occur with pure plutonium. Alpha-phase plutonium, aside from the difficulties with its mechanical properties, will shift to a higher density phase quite readily. The use of gallium does greatly improve the handling characteristics in casting and machining and it is also phase stable over a far broader temperature range than alpha phase.
0:51 is that actual Nagasaki footage
Yes.
Guest Informant Yes. Several aircraft flew over, one carrying the bomb, others taking photos, etc.
Yes, you indeed just watched ~70K men, women and children being instantly killed right there, at that moment. Let that sink in for a while.
And at the same time, the people of Kokura didn't realise how they had a close shave with death.
Rad Derry Correct. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilian, not military, targets. They were “shock and awe” attacks. This was possible by dehumanizing them during the war via propaganda. Keep in mind that US citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent were imprisoned illegally.
Professor do you have any merchandise on periodic videos...
Only 1g of plutonium actually split on the bomb out of 6kg!!! Imagine how big the explosion would be if all the 6kg of plutonium split!
big ooof
Efficiency is a B. Modern multistage bombs have much higher conversion rates.
It has been said several times in the comments, this figure is actually inaccurate. 1g was converted into energy by e=mc², so the fission products weight 1g less than the plutonium that reacted, but actually ~20% of the plutonium fissioned so a bit more than 1kg.
Nuclear bomb science is fascinating. Like they had bombs that you could literally dial in how big of an explosion you wanted to cause. Or how the Castle Bravo test was several times bigger than anticipated, because the casing material thought to be inert reacted unpredictably and actually enhanced the explosive yield from 5-6 megatons to 15 megatons.
North Korea: *taking notes*
I watch your videos periodically!
Mutual nuclear arsenal development pretty much stopped world wide conflicts from happening, so I don't think they're only bad morally
Only between the US and USSR. But that balance assumes that both parties are rational actors. As we've seen recently, not everybody who gets into power is rational.
@@BlackEpyon Was there a worldwide military conflict that the US and USSR weren't involved in?
Brilliant and a clever ending 👍🏼
Hearing the explosion simultaneously with the flash just sound wrong.
Modern implosion bombs aren’t perfectly spherical though, they’re more like an egg shape so they fit within the profile of an ICBM’s re-entry vehicle that’s basically a cone. And also to note, the explosive lenses aren't set off at exactly the same time as they did in legacy ones.
It's amazing to think of all the technology developed during the Manhattan project.
Aliens
Most of it make-believe. Like nuclear power and atomic bombs.
@Marco Guerini there's a certain group of particularly insane people who believe that nuclear bombs are not real.
@Marco Guerini Same excuses of flat-Earthers, they just think those are fake.
sir Martyn is the best youtuber on earth
Is it possible for you to take us on a tour of your library's worth of books. I would love to see your favorites in your collection or the ones you refer back to the most.
7:00 actually the amount of plutonium that split was about one kilogram, but about 0.1% of that matter was converted to pure energy.
Can I hire this man to tell me bed time stories about nuclear bombs and flesh eating acids? I could listen him forever.
Great video. Thank you for least pondering the big questions.
Ciao
Thanks for making these videos Professor, Keeping doing what you do!
How big would the eplossion be if all 6kg plutonium reacted?
I find videos like this very alloying.
What is the book the professor is showing at 06:30 titled atom bombs and where can we buy it?
Seriously, how could someone give this a thumbs down?
Chaz crowd. Nukes are waycist.
I hope I don't get on a watch list for watching this video, but then you might get on a watchlist, because I watch your videos.
We love you Professor Poliakoff.
Prof Poliakoff, I love your video perspective here because it totally makes you look like the Swedish Chef 🤣🤣🤣🤣... Cannot be unseen! Thanks for making my day, love your work!
Heh i see it. The arms!
Muppets nuclear laboratory.
Dr bunsen idk. But maybe Neil is Beaker?
The prof is on my watch list. What's why I am here.
What an outstanding Professor!