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.