Mod-01 Lec-33 Nuclear Fission basics

So, today we start a very important nuclear reaction, that is nuclear fission and all our nuclear power plants run on this nuclear fission, which give us so much of energy, which we use fission is essentially breaking apart heavy nucleus in 2 roughly equal parts. So, if you have a nucleus some nucleus say X and then if it breaks in roughly two equal

parts Y and Z and these are all. So, called heavy nuclei and middleweight nuclei. So, essentially a heavy nucleus breaks into two middleweight nuclei, this process is known as fission or this reaction nuclear reaction is known as fission reaction. Now, historically neutron was discovered 1932’s. And then lots of nuclear physics experiments started

bombarding neutron on different materials with the idea, that new elements of higher a value will be produced. So, neutron going into the material, increasing the mass number by one and then, later on beta decay can convert and neutron into protons so that a in periodic table you get one higher element. So, this way perhaps transuranic elements can be obtained

so that was the motivation. So, lots of experiments on neutron irradiating. We are going on and that is when 1939’s that and strassmann were doing this experiment irradiating uranium natural uranium sample with neutron and when they did that. So, the product that was obtained that, they were chemist in fact and so chemical analysis

was very strong. So, when that irradiate product was analyzed they found that, there is barium in this barium. Barium is something like 56 here and around 138 there are several 6 isotopes

of barium which are stable. So, 138 is the most abundant one. So, starting with uranium, which has a natural uranium has as you know uranium 235,92 and uranium 238 92. So, from here one is getting barium. So, originally when they detected, this element they thought this is new transuranic element having properties similar, to barium but,