The most convenient nuclear species to use for nuclear chain reactions is a fissile isotope of uranium, U. Careful engineering must go into having those neutrons go on to create more fission events. Contrary to what one may expect, difficulties arise in getting enough neutrons to go on and make a sustained nuclear reaction, rather than having too many nuclear reactions. If every fission event leads to exactly one more fission event, the nuclear chain reaction is said to be critical.
Figure 2 shows a simplification of the fission chain reaction. The video below has a member of the Energy Education team explaining nuclear chain reactions:.
Fossil Fuels. Nuclear Fuels. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your vocabulary with our question quiz! Love words?
Need even more definitions? Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms The same, but different. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Nov. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? A series of events in which each induces or influences the next. A series of chemical reactions in which one product of a reacting set is a reactant in the following set.
A multistage nuclear reaction, especially a self-sustaining series of fissions in which the release of neutrons from the splitting of one atom leads to the splitting of others. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
A process in which the result of one event triggers another event, usually of the same kind, which in turn triggers yet another event, so that the overall reaction tends to be self-sustaining. Nuclear fission reactions are chain reactions, in which the splitting of an atomic nucleus releases neutrons that penetrate other nuclei, causing them to split.
The spread of heat through a substance is also a chain reaction, as fast-moving molecules in a hot part of the substance collide with neighboring molecules, passing on their kinetic energy to them, thereby making more of the substance warmer. See more at fission. See Note at nuclear reactor. See also kinetic theory. All rights reserved. From the Cambridge English Corpus. Experimental infections of rabbits with rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus monitored by polymerase chain reaction.
Plasmodium falciparum : a simple polymerase chain reaction method for differentiating strains. The great technical problem of such a system is the critical mass of a fission chain reaction , making it difficult to miniaturize a fission explosion. Thus, typically of a chain reaction , either interstellar panspermia has proceeded to completion or it has not taken place at all.
We posit that conduct problems interfere with this development of competencies, thus causing a developmental chain reaction of failures. The role of environmental contamination with small round structured viruses in a hospital outbreak investigated by reversetranscriptase polymerase chain reaction assay. Routine detection of herpes simplex virus and varicella zoster virus by polymerase chain reaction reveals that initial herpes zoster is frequently misdiagnosed as herpes simplex.
Cloning members of proteintyrosine kinase family using polymerase chain reaction. In a group of these animals, any stimulus that causes one of them to flee will lead to a chain reaction of rapid movements. Thus, a chain reaction of lipid peroxidation leads to membrane damage. A norovirus outbreak associated with wedding cake polymerase chain reaction assay. So, changing the value of one cell may produce a chain reaction which recursively causes the change of a large group of cells.
See all examples of chain reaction.
0コメント