this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Uranium generates that energy by fission. The hydrogen in sugar could generate huge amounts of energy if fused.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

And this boulder could generate huge amounts of energy if I pushed it up to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and let it roll down.

44 upvotes and 0 downvotes for a comment that doesn't understand that energy density measurements like this tend to measure the useful energy of a system.

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's disappointing that natural selection didn't figure out fusion.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

It figured out photosynthesis instead. Why do your own fusion when you can just take advantage of the fusion that's already happening?

[–] Suoko@feddit.it 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

For comparison:

  • Chemical combustion of uranium: ~4.7 MJ/kg
  • Nuclear fission of uranium-235: ~83.14 TJ/kg (or $ 83.14 \times 10^6 , \text{MJ/kg} $)
[–] qaz@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do you have a Lemmy client that supports mathematical functions?

[–] Suoko@feddit.it 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

With ollama, having smart local bots for your lemmy instance should be easy

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Did you reply to the wrong comment?

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

How much more energy would you get if you fused uranium?

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Using the rule of thumb, anything heavier than iron requires energy input to fuse. So you lose energy fusing uranium.

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Serious answer: A huge negative amount. Anything above iron requires energy to fuse (which is why it produces energy from fission.) and I'm pretty sure nothing with 184 protons could be stable enough to count as being produced - the nuclei would be more smashed apart than merging at that point.

[–] desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 8 months ago

and all would generate the same if thrown to something capable of lossless e=mc^2 conversion (maybe a black hole)