My question is a fairly simple one that I cant seem to find on Google: How much energy, in both technical and laymans' terms, is released from the splitting of a single hydrogen atom?
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$\begingroup$ Did you mean to ask how much energy is released from the splitting of a single uranium 235 atom? $\endgroup$– BillDOeCommented Aug 23, 2015 at 23:19
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$\begingroup$ @BillOer well I was thinking of the H-bomb, I assume they split hydrogen atoms for that.. $\endgroup$– J.ToddCommented Aug 24, 2015 at 0:16
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6$\begingroup$ @ColorQuestor They fuse multiple hydrogen nuclei together similar to how the sun does. $\endgroup$– TimaeusCommented Aug 24, 2015 at 0:52
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3 Answers
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The only split you can do is to ionize the atom, separating the proton and electron. That requires 13.6 eV, the amount of energy one electron acquires on falling through a potential of 13.6 Volts. In ordinary terms, this is a minuscule amount of energy. It is absorbed, not produced. $\phantom{This is here to add characters to make the edit long enough to be acceptable.}$
answered Aug 23, 2015 at 23:16
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For light elements, roughly up to iron (Fe), splitting atoms actually costs energy, rather than energy being released. Only the really heavy atoms from an atomic mass number of about 150 release energy during fission (atom splitting).
Hydrogen is in any case a bit unique in that the nucleus only contains one nucleon (a proton) so that splitting that nucleus in the commonly understood sense of the word is not possible.
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I was thinking of the H-bomb, I assume they split hydrogen atoms for that.
For the H-bomb, Deuterium is fused into Helium. Deuterium is easier to fuse than Hydrogen. But I think the energy output of Hydrogen into Helium, which takes more than 1 step, is .68% of the rest mass.
If we apply E=MC^2 to a mole of hydrogen (a bit over 1 gram, so not very much).
E = M (1.0079 grams) x (.0068 - percentage conversion) x C^2
So, energy in Joules, we have to convert to Kilograms and Meters per second, so
E (in joules) = .0010079 * .0068 * 300,000,000 * 300,000,000 = 616 billion joules, from 1 gram. That's about 145 tons of TNT equivalent. It's a significant amount of energy (1/100th of Hiroshima) from what's basically the amount of hydrogen you find in 1/3 of 1 ounce of water. (I think my math is right, correct me if not).
But . . . 1 atom, that's very different. Divide 616 billion by the number of atoms in a mole (the number of hydrogen atoms that would have a mass of 1.079 grams), you're dividing 616 billion by 6.022 x 10^23, you end up 1 trillionth of a joule or 1/100,000th of an erg. - very very little energy, so if 4 hydrogen were to (by some unknown force) merge into a helium on your finger, the energy would be so small, my guess is, you wouldn't even feel it. It might take thousands hydrogen atoms fusing on your finger before you begin to feel even a little bit warm.
