Deuterium

Our world is made of elements and combinations of elements called compounds. An element is a pure substance made of atoms that are all of the same type. At this given time, 116 elements are known, and roughly about 90 of these occur naturally. But how do we know what elements are in our universe?, Scientists have developed many theories as to why and how we know. These theories consist of mainly the Big Bang Theory and how it had created the first and lightest elements in our universe, or Red giants(Dying stars) because as the dying star’s core begins to run out of hydrogen it begins to die and create carbon atoms as a result of it’s death, another piece of evidence we have on this topic is supernova’s because star releases a very large amount of energy and this allows elements heavier than iron such as uranium and gold to be produced. And the last piece of evidence that will be discussed thoroughly will be how Dmitri Mendeleev had devised the periodic table and the periodic law that allowed him to leave blanks in his invention based on the known and unknown elements in our universe. One of the main evidence we genuinely have on how we know what elements there are is the big bang theory which was the start of our universe. During the formation and expansion of the universe 13 .7 billion years ago, the big bang only created the lightest and most simple elements such as hydrogen and helium along with trace amounts of lithium and beryllium along side. After only a couple of…

stable one, while tritium has a half-life of roughly twelve years, making it slightly radioactive (Unterweger et al.; Wanjek). However, tritium has a higher binding energy than deuterium making it a more efficient fuel (Watkins). The deuterium-tritium reaction has a yield of roughly 17.6 MeV whereas the deuterium-deuterium reaction only has a yield of about 3.65 MeV. Still, the DT reaction has its disadvantages. For one, in the DT reaction about 80% of the energy is stored in a high-energy…

This model was called the glaciological flow model. This model shows how the snow flowed and spread out as snow piled on. The deeper the layer is, the thinner the layer becomes because it was compressed more. This model gave the scientists an idea of the age of the layer of ice. The model was not perfect, they had to fix the model. They looked for particles from eruptions which were called tephra. The date of the eruption had already been determined so therefore, when tephra appeared in the…

live at Colombia University in New York City. During his time at Colombia University, Urey worked on the properties of atoms and molecules. Urey researched isotopes and believed that the discovery of the hydrogen isotope would be very significant. He kept a chart of all the discovered and predicted isotopes on his wall. On this chart were two isotopes of hydrogen that were both undiscovered. He named one of these isotopes deuterium after reading an article of the isotope. Deuterium is very rare…

Many have asked the question why doesn't Mars have oceans? A recent breakthrough discovery has confirmed that liquid water does exist on Mars. This means there is the potential for life to exist here. However, this water is very minimal compared to previous levels of water found on Mars. A study done by Geronimo Villanueva and Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reveals that Mars used to have at minimum seven times as much water as it does today with there being enough water to…

The concepts of nuclear fusion and fission have recently taken a great role on the future of energy acquirement. Nuclear energy seemingly is the way of the future as it is exceedingly more efficient than any means of energy that which we have now. In nuclear power plants, fission is used to generate the power required to develop steam which then powers turbines. Fusion on the other hand, is essentially the reaction that occurs in the sun. Essentially, "Hydrogen nuclei (such as deuterium and…

It takes place at such high temperatures that the gas produced turns into plasma. Usually, fusion is not feasible because of the electrostatic repulsion between 2 nuclei but if circumstances can be achieved where the 2 hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium are heated to such an extent that they can overcome electrostatic repulsion, the 2 nuclei can fuse to release a tremendous amount of energy. This is currently being achieved by the Tokamak reactors. Nuclear fusion doesn’t risk running out…

In western countries, nuclear power as an important energy, research in twenty-first century has not been interrupted, and has made great achievements. According to public information, we know that the energy of nuclear power generation comes from the fission energy released by the uranium fuels in a nuclear reactor. In order to achieve the polymerization of light nuclei, there must be a large amount of deuterium and tritium. Fortunately, there exist a large number of uranium fuels on the earth…

Ashley-Ann Burnett October 4, 2015 Lab #3: Acids, Bases & pH SLS43-14/7-8 Pre-Lab Questions: 1) An isotope is an atom with a different atomic weight due to changes in the number of neutrons in the nucleus. Some examples of isotopes are Protium, Deuterium, and Tritium, which are all Hydrogen atoms. Instead of the zero neutrons Hydrogen has in its Protium form, Deuterium and Tritium have two and three neutrons respectively. This change in neutron number and…

protostar is only able to gather 80 masses of Jupiter, or less, it will never have the mass and therefore the gravitational force necessary to start nuclear fusion of hydrogen (“Stars & brown”, 2013), which requires the core of the star to reach at least three million degrees kelvin (“Brown”, 2012). Several scenarios exist which can culminate in protostars not receiving the necessary amount of material, such as if the gas and dust cloud around it is low in density or several protostars form…