Fission, Fusion and Nuclear Decay

We were introduced to three new topics in class this week: fission, fusion and nuclear decay. These topics were intriguing to me, and were fairly easy concepts to understand once broken down.

Fusion is the combination of two elements to create a new element. It's as simple as that. Nuclear fusion occurs in the Sun, and in developing nuclear power plants. Fusion is used to mainly create new elements. Fission, however, is just the opposite. Nuclear fission is the splitting and separating of atoms. Fission is often referred to as a chain reaction because once an atom is split it goes off and splits other atoms. Nuclear decay is the breaking down and decaying of an element. Once an atom is decayed it emits particles and/or energy. This energy is gamma. Gamma rays are energetic electromagnetic waves.

The content of this week's learning was not too difficult and easily broken down to be understandable.

Atomic Structure and the Periodic Table

In this class the amount of information I have obtained thus far is a lot for only being in this class for two weeks. The information and the content of what I have learned has expanded my knowledge of things I didn't know before. I have learned various information about atomic structure, and the periodic table. We have broken down the structure of the atom so that is easily understandable.

Basically an atom is composed of three components and these are protons, electrons and neutrons. Protons have a positive charge and are located in the nucleus. Neutrons have no charge at all and are also located in the nucleus of the atom. Electrons have a negative charge, and they "orbit" the nucleus. These three components are the most important part of the atom and they make up the whole atomic structure.

The periodic table of elements is incredibly important in this class. We have used it just about every single day. I now know how to read any given element and identify the atomic number as well as the atomic mass. The atomic number  is located at the top of the element, and the atomic mass is located at the bottom. The atomic number is the amount of protons (p+) and electrons (e-1) the element has. The atomic mass number consists of the amount of (p+) and neutrons (n0) combined that the element has. The actual organization of the periodic table is categorized in periods and then groups (families). The periods are the rows, and the groups are the columns.