this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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As I've learned more, the energy from a single atom is not much. They split nitrogen long before uranium but it didn't really matter. You need the chain reaction of uranium.
From Gemini:
The energy released from a single uranium atom splitting is an infinitesimally tiny fraction of what's needed to even warm a mug of water. You would need the simultaneous fission of approximately 1.96 quadrillion (1,960,000,000,000,000) uranium atoms to heat a single mug of water.
*JFC what's up with the downvotes? Because I used Gemini?
Thank God there was an AI here to tell us something we could just look up.
I was interested in whether this was accurate. I got a similar answer, but I know almost nothing about nuclear fission and math is not my strong suit. Here it is anyway:
The heat capacity of water is fairly linear. At normal atmospheric pressure, it's 4,200J/kg°C, which means a 300ml mug of water would take 1,260 joules to raise by 1°C and thus 75,600 joules to raise by 60°C.
Fission of a single atomic nucleus of U-235 releases an average of 3.2e-11 joules (0.000000000032). To release 75,600 joules would presumably take fission of 2.3625e+15 atoms (2,362,500,000,000,000 -- two quadrillion three hundred sixty-two trillion five hundred billion).
You uh definitely at least took a heat transfer class in college or you wouldn't know what to do with all this stuff. Hell, I took one 10 years ago, and I barely know what to do with this information anymore. Kudos to you for doing the napkin math
Nah, just read into it a little and then forgot it afterwards! The first link -- the old Reddit thread -- was quite helpful.
Considering it was 250 ml by 60 C, looks bang on.
I'm not downvoting you, but I think a lot of people, including me, would read "from Gemini" (or any AI) as "you can't trust this information".
For me, whenever anyone includes AI generated crap in their comment, I think three things:
ChatGPT will straight up hallucinate numbers (or any information). Gemini is much more accurate. Haven't tried others.
They all do it.
heat by how much? AI as useful as ever.
I just cut that bit out. 20 C to 80 C.
Isn't that common knowledge? I don't think that anyone seriously believes that splitting a single atom causes an explosion.
I mean I'm not saying that you're an expert, but my us highschool education regarding nuclear fission was pretty handwavy, and won't come up again in most careers
I'd wager loads of people with no scientific knowledge do.
I'd wager they don't even know what you mean by "splitting an atom" and wouldn't give a rat's ass whether it released any energy.
Even MY anium???
No, I amanium!