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
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.