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
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.