Stop it with the friction - that's the other thread. This is quite easy to explain. The temperature of a material is determined by the velocity of its constituent molecules. The products of uranium fission are lighter than uranium, mass has been lost, this lost mass goes into making the constituents go faster. As E=mc^2 a little mass makes a lot of energy.
Lets look at a Nuclear bomb.
A Uranium projectile, or bullet is supposed to smash into a set of Uranium rings or discs at the other end of the bomb right?
For this to happen, it has to have powder charges explode behind the projectile to force it, at speed into the rings/discs and as soon as that happens, it creates a mammoth city destroying Nuclear explosion.
I have three massive problems with this.
1. When the powder charge ignites, how come it doesn't blow the bomb casing apart before the projectile hits the rings/discs.
2. Assuming the projectile does hit the rings/discs, why would it fission immediate into this super city busting mushroom cloud.
3. If Neutrons smash into atoms, then once the bomb has exploded, how do the Neutrons keep smashing into the atoms when it will be scattered into the air in quick time, meaning that it would be like a base ball batter trying to hit balls by running about in all directions with them raining all over the place, if you get my drift.
It's all magical stuff and very easy to brainwash folk into believing it all, yet it's far to far fetched for me to even contemplate.
Firstly, the nuclear bomb you are talking about is only a type of nuclear bomb, the gun-type nuclear bomb (for example "
little boy", the bomb that was dropped on hiroshima). There are other types nuclear bombs such as
fat man, an implosion-type nuclear bomb. Anyways here are answers to the questions.
1. As squevil said, same as with a bullet. Just because an explosion sends one thing flying does not mean all will be destroyed by that explosion
2. Well it is not immediate, however it happens really fast because of the massive amounts of energy involved. The neutrons have much energy from the fission they originated from and were "shot" from and so are moving very fast. As they are moving so fast, the next reactions will happen soon (as the distance traveled isn't a large amount) and they will multiply in number of reactions extremely quickly (as the uranium atoms are close enough together to have enough free neutrons whizzing about and actually hitting into other atoms to keep a sustained reaction. See
critical mass).
3. Firstly, the neutrons will be moving as fast if not faster than the uranium atoms (as they are much less massive but are recieving roughly the same amount of energy) and the explosion is kind of like a build up and then an explosion. The reason the uranium is moving in the first place (though much of the moving things will probably be the end elements such as barium and krypton) is because of the free neutrons hitting the other uranium.
As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
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