User:SqueakSquawk4
I have done a bunch of things! I wrote most of explanation for 2527, and created (Badly) the page for 2616. I think I screwed that last one up though. I will add more later.
Hello people! You are probably looking for how I calculated the yield of a baloon made of Helium-2. Well you're in luck!
Calculation time! (Sorry). Helium 2 has a Half-life of roughly 10^-9 seconds, or one nanosecond, and a mean life of roughly 1.44 nanoseconds. For context, light travels at roughly 30cm per nanosecond. This means that on a human scale the energy is released all at once, and we only have to calculate total energy released, and not worry about time taken.
Helium-2 decays through 99.99% proton emission. For simplicity's sake, we'll call that 100%. Helium-2 is formed from helium-1, helium-1, and 1.25 MegaElectronvolts, or as an equation,| 1 |
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A moderately-sized balloon might have a diameter of 12 inches. Some calculations give this a volume of roughyly 14.83 litres (Assuming a spherical balloon). If the balloon is at 1 atmosphere of pressure at 25 degrees celsius, then there would be 0.6058 mol in the balloon, mean that there is 0.6058 * 6.022 × 10^23 atoms, or 364,821,332,070,000,040,000,000 atoms.
To recap, a helium-2 atom decaying results in 1.35 MeV of energy, and there are roughly 364.821 sextillion atoms in a balloon.
Every atom will create 1.5 MeV of energy, and therefore 364.821 sextillion atoms will create 364.821*1.35 sextillion, or 492.5088 sextillion MeV. Interestingly, this is equal to 492.5 nonillion electron volts, or 4.295 MegaYottaElectronvolts
492.5088 sextillion MegaElectonvolts is also equal to roughly 78,909 Megajoules, or 18.86 tons of TNT equivalent
This is rather big. but not massively so. The smallest nuclear bomb, the W54, had a yield of between 10 and 1000 tons of TNT. The largest conventional bomb, the GBU-43/B MOAB, has a yield of roughly 11 tons. The M67 grenade uses 180 grams of TNT-RDX mixture. So while the Helium-2 baloon bomb would be larger than all conventional bombs, it would still be smaller than most nukes.
I have a discussion page now!
