Question: in a nuclear bomb how do atoms make the explosion bigger than normal bombs?

Alastair Sloan answered on 23 Jun 2010:

It depends what nuclear device it is. The explosion is caused by the release of energy created in the device. The energy created by an atomic bomb is caused by a process calle dnuclear fission, but the energy from a hydrogen bomb or thermonuclear bomb is caused by nuclear fusion.

In the atomic bomb, a normal little explosion causes the the uranium inside the bomb to be compressed until it reaches a critical mass. It casues atoms in the uranium to break up and a chain reaction of atoms breaking up starts. This speeds up and the energy that is released is huge creating a devastating explosion. Uranium breaks down naturally, releasing its energy as heat, but this can take hundreds / thousands of years. In an atomic bomb – we release all that energy in 1 second so the explosion is massive.

In the thermonuclear bomb, we start with a small explosion to trigger the fission reaction as I described above, but then we start fusing lighter elements together under the immense heat created. This creates new particles which have high energy emissions hence the big explosion