dvo 2 Flashcards
Inertial confinement fusion
Using high-power lasers to heat and compress a pellet of
deuterium and tritium to start fusion; utilized by the NIF
K-capture
Form of electron capture that absorbs it from the “K” shell (the shell closest to the nucleus)
Maxwell’s theory of
electromagnetism
Description of light as a wave made up of oscillating electric and
magnetic fields
Refraction
Light bending around narrow apertures or corners
diffraction
the process by which a beam of light or other system of waves is spread out as a result of passing through a narrow aperture or across an edge, typically accompanied by interference between the wave forms produced
Solar wind
Collection of low mass particles ejected by the Sun
Spontaneous emission
An atom releasing a photon in a random direction
Stimulated emission
Causing atom to transition to a lower energy level and release a
photon; used in lasers
B Reactor
First plutonium-generating reactor; located at Hanford Engineer
Works
Y-12
Electromagnetic separation plant at Oak Ridge; second manmade
nuclear reactor
X-10
Graphite reactor at Oak Ridge
Tsar Bomba
Most powerful nuclear weapon detonated; a hydrogen bomb; as
powerful as 50 million tons of TNT
Trinity Bomb
First nuclear weapon ever detonated; implosion-type
Transmission electron
microscope
Device which relies on the wave properties of electrons to achieve
very fine image resolutions; accelerates electrons to 100 keV; has a
resolution on the order of 0.0037 nm
Thin Man
Gun-type plutonium fission bomb; abandoned due to poor quality
of available plutonium
Thermonuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon which uses a fission bomb to trigger a
thermonuclear explosion
Scintillation counter
Radiation detector; relies on NaI crystal and a photomultiplier
tube; can determine the energy of emitted radiation
Proportional counters
Sophisticated form of Geiger counters; measures energy of
radiation
Pressurized water reactor
Reactor which uses a separate cooling loop of water to produce
steam; common in the United States; prevents fuel leakage
Particle in a box
Physics model which describes an energized particle trapped in a
1 dimensional space bounded by infinitely high potential walls
Magnetic separation
enrichment
Uses a magnetic field to separate uranium-235 and uranium-238
Little Boy
Uranium gun-type nuclear weapon; dropped on Hiroshima
National Ignition Facility
Largest ICF device in the world; at Lawrence Livermore National
Labs in California; uses lasers to compress a hydrogen pellet
Large Hadron Collider at
CERN
Advanced particle accelerator capable of accelerating particles to
energies greater than 1 TeV
