how strong is a atomic bomb???
102608
They range in power. About 100 megaton of TNT. The radiation from the bomb also kills.
616386
There are many different measures for destructive ability.\n\nTypically this is measured in units of energy.  For bullets, they measure the kinetic energy of the bullet which is then given in Joules (a measure of energy).  For atomic bombs the common measure is kilo-tons which is a measure of energy as well that can be converted to Joules (just a whole lot of them).  A kilo-ton is about 4,200,000,000,000 Joules.  A .45 bullet has about 450 Joules.\n\nLasers also impart energy on their targets.  The measure is typically in megawatts.  A megawatt is 1,000,000 Joules per second that it is applied.\n\nThe number of Joules doesn't tell you quite enough though.  The reason is because a single Joule of energy well aimed, could kill a person, but if you go out running in the sun, you will receive thousands of Joules in a short period of time from the Sun (which is obviously not destroying you).\n\nThe amount of energy that it takes to heat a cup of coffee is considerably more than the amount of energy it takes to fire most bullets, yet you can safely drink the coffee and the energy contained (as heat) within it.
470540
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_of_materials
218083
I assume you mean nuclear "bomb"...\n\nIn simplistic terms, and nothing you can't easily find elsewhere, a nuclear bomb is made up of material that fissions (meaning that its atoms can be split to release energy) - this is either Uranium-325 or Plutonium.  Uranium is found in nature but the vast majority is U-238 which doesn't fission - natural uranium must be enriched to create a fissionable amount of uranium - this is true for commercial power reactor fuel too.   Plutonium is made in nuclear reactors from bombarding other materials with neutrons.\n\nTo have a "nuclear yield" the fissionable material in a bomb must be forced into a 'critical mass' configuration which means that it is so dense (atoms close together) that once the material starts to fission and release energy and neutrons, other atoms will capture the released neutons and then they will fission releasing more energy and neutrons and so on and so on with the chain reaction making the boom.\n\nWith the early plutonium bombs (Fat Man), the material was in a sphere and was forced together with high explosives uniformly to create a ball (critical mass). In the first uranium bomb (Little Boy, which they didn't even test until it was dropped on Japan since they were confident it would work) 2 uranium blobs were forced together by essentially thrusting/throwing/shooting one to the other to create the critical mass.  The math behind all this physics is incredibly complex.\n\nTo add bang for the buck they started adding the gas Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, hence the name Hydrogen bomb versus just the Atomic Bomb...  Tritium makes the yield much bigger.
569478
it was 2 atomic bombs that were used to change the attitudes of the japanese government.a hydrogen bomb is much more powerful and back then they had no way of transporting that kind of power.the germans had a scientist who did come up with the idea and he came to america to share his knowledge of the atomic bomb,Albert Einstein.and if atomic were used today in a war,it would be as effective today as it was back then.
445580
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb.htm
1035178
If I'm not mistaken, we've tested a number of 20-megaton nukes before, and the fact that you're able to ask this question means that we've survived that first test. :-)  \n\nAs for how big of a nuke it would take to blow up Earth, a couple of issues you'll have to deal with first is what to do about all of the debris that will settle after the nuke goes off, because as it floats back down because of gravity, then gravity itself will hold down all of the matter upon Earth. As to what it would take to cause the most damage, I've gotten to thinking since the 2004 tsunami that if a well-placed nuke was right on major fault lines either in the ocean or possibly on land (like maybe on the New Madrid fault), the tectonic action resulting from the force of the nuclear blast would be much more destructive than the bomb itself, because the shifting of tectonic plates would then cause damage at a much greater radius from ground zero in the resulting earthquake than would just blast waves in an atmospheric explosion.\n\nMaybe that doesn't answer your question, but it's the best I can figure as I am neither a physicist nor a geologist. :-)
124578
There is no difference...some people say nuke because that was the term used in the 1960's...there is a difference between atom bombs and hydrogen bombs...atom bombs use uranium as the "fuel" (catalyst), it being a very "heavy" atom (atomical weight) while the hydrogen bomb as the name implies uses hydrogen as its catalyst which is very light.
85380
bomb is an explosive device which, although not containing more energy than ordinary fuel (except in the case of a nuclear weapon), generates and releases its energy very rapidly, as a violent, destructive shock wave. It is usually some kind of container filled with explosive material, designed to cause random destruction when set off. The word comes from the Greek βόμβος (bombos), an onomatopoetic term with approximately the same meaning as "boom" in English.\n\nThese are first and foremost weapons; the term "bomb" is not usually applied to explosive devices used for civilian purposes (such as construction or mining), although the people using the devices may or may not sometimes refer to them as bombs. Note that many military explosive devices are not called "bombs". The military mostly calls airdropped, unpowered explosive weapons "bombs," and such bombs are normally used by air forces and naval aviation. Other military explosive devices are called grenades (such as hand grenades), shells, depth charges, warheads (in missiles), or land mines.\n\nThey have been used for centuries in warfare and are a central part of the terrorist's arsenal. They fall into three distinct categories: conventional (filled with chemical explosives), dispersive (filled with submunitions, chemicals or other disruptive agents which are spread on or shortly before impact) or nuclear (relying on nuclear fission or nuclear fusion for their effect).\n\n \nDevice originally thought to be a pipe bomb, found to be a time bomb. From a U.S. government publication.A distinction is commonly drawn between terrorist and military bombs. The latter are almost always mass-produced weapons, developed and constructed to a standard design out of standard components and intended to be deployed in a standard way each time. By contrast, terrorist bombs are usually custom-made, developed to any number of designs, use a wide range of explosives of varying levels of power and chemical stability, and are used in many different ways. For this reason, they are generally referred to as improvised explosive devices or IEDs.\n\nThe most powerful bomb in existence is the hydrogen bomb, a nuclear weapon. The most powerful bombs ever used in combat were the two nuclear bombs dropped by the United States to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most powerful non-nuclear bomb is the United States Air Force's MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast).\n\nThe most powerful bomb ever was Tsar Bomba: ca. 50 Mt; it had a mass of 27 tons; it was dropped from a bomber for a test, but was for various reasons not very suitable for combat.\n\nThe first hydrogen bomb Ivy Mike (10.4 Mt) was even heavier in mass, 82 tons. It was too heavy to be deliverable by a plane or rocket, and therefore not very suitable for an attack.
760535
w 54 is small.\n\nseveral websites on this, for example:\n\nhttp://mothra.rerf.or.jp/ENG/A-bomb/History/Damages.html\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bomb
37488
An atomic bomb is composed of some heavy-duty explosives, U-235 or P-239, and a neutron source.\n\nThe neutron source is in the center, surrounded by the Uranium or Plutonium, and then the explosives. Upon detonation, the explosives explode simultaneously, crushing the nuclear material in on the neutron source. This causes the material to achieve critical mass and a massive chain reaction takes place. Very massive.
106530
Open it up and smash it with a hammer. If you destroy anything vital, it will stop working.\n\nThe difficult part with atomic bombs is to make them explode. Everything MUST work perfectly with perfect timing. If anything is off, it's a dud. The chances of them exploding accidentally is almost zero.\n\nAccidental launch is a different matter.
210501
An hydrogen bomb is a nuclear bomb--so is an atomic bomb.
1160742
Completely dependent on the megaton yield and geography, e.g., mountains reflecting the blast wave or shielding from the heat wave.\n\nSettle for Washington DC. Virtually no one in an area of about 40-65 square miles would survive.\n\nTo visualize the destructiveness of a nuclear bomb, imagine a powerful strategic nuclear weapon detonated above the Pentagon, a short distance from the center of Washington, D.C.  Imagine it is a "near-surface" burst--about 1,500 feet above the ground--which is how a military planner might choose to wreak blast damage on a massive structure like the Pentagon. Let us say that it is an ordinary, clear day with visibility at 10 miles, and that the weapon's explosive power is 300 kilotons--the approximate yield of most modern strategic nuclear weapons. This would be far more destructive than the 15-kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima or the 21-kiloton bomb detonated at Nagasaki. \n\nThe detonation of a 300-kiloton nuclear bomb would release an extraordinary amount of energy in an instant--about 300 trillion calories within about a millionth of a second. More than 95 percent of the energy initially released would be in the form of intense light. This light would be absorbed by the air around the weapon, superheating the air to very high temperatures and creating a ball of intense heat--a fireball. \n\nBecause this fireball would be so hot, it would expand rapidly. Almost all of the air that originally occupied the volume within and around the fireball would be compressed into a thin shell of superheated, glowing, high-pressure gas. This shell of gas would compress the surrounding air, forming a steeply fronted, luminous shockwave of enormous extent and power--the blast wave. \n\nBy the time the fireball approached its maximum size, it would be more than a mile in diameter. It would very briefly produce temperatures at its center of more than 200 million degrees Fahrenheit (about 100 million degrees Celsius)--about four to five times the temperature at the center of the sun.\n\nThis enormous release of light and heat would create an environment of almost unimaginable lethality. Vast amounts of thermal energy would ignite extensive fires over urban and suburban areas. In addition, the blast wave and high-speed winds would crush many structures and tear them apart. The blast wave would also boost the incidence and rate of fire-spread by exposing ignitable surfaces, releasing flammable materials, and dispersing burning materials. \n\nWithin minutes of a detonation, fire would be everywhere. Numerous fires and firebrands--burning materials that set more fires--would coalesce into a mass fire. (Scientists prefer this term to "firestorm," but I will use them interchangeably here.) This fire would engulf tens of square miles and begin to heat enormous volumes of air that would rise, while cool air from the fire's periphery would be pulled in. Within tens of minutes after the detonation, the pumping action from rising hot air would generate superheated ground winds of hurricane force, further intensifying the fire.\n\nVirtually no one in an area of about 40-65 square miles would survive.
1001885
It would do nothing.  In 1994, a comet (Shoemaker-Levy) crashed into Jupiter.  I don't have the exact numbers on the equivalent to a nuclear bomb, but it was much more powerful than any bomb.  Jupiter kind of sat there and shrugged it off without much effect.\n\nEdit:  Found a site that says *one* fragment of the comet was the same as 225,000 megatons.  The biggest fragment was the same as 6 million megatons.\n\nhttp://www.isc.tamu.edu/~astro/sl9/cometfaq2.html
623881
There are two basic types of atomic bomb. The gun type was used over Hiroshima and used U-235. The compression type is more common now and was used over Nagasaki and used Pu-239.
800334
Tsar Bomba (Russian: Царь-бомба, literally "Tsar-bomb") is the Western name for the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated or built. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb of about 50 megatons was codenamed Ivan by its developers.\n\nThe bomb was tested on October 30, 1961 in Novaya Zemlya, an island in the Arctic Sea. The device was scaled down from its original design of 100 megatons to reduce the resulting nuclear fallout...\n\nCodenamed "Ivan" during its development, the Tsar Bomba was not intended for use in warfare, but should be seen as an instance of the Cold War-era saber-rattling indulged in by the USSR and the USA.\n\nThe Tsar Bomba was a multi-stage hydrogen bomb with a yield of about 50 megatons (Mt). The initial three-stage (fission-fusion-fission) design was capable of approximately 100 Mt, but at a cost of too much radioactive fallout. To limit fallout, the third stage, consisting of a uranium-238 fission tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction), was replaced with one made of lead. This eliminated fast fission by the fusion-stage neutrons, so that approximately 97% of the total energy resulted from the fusion stage alone (as such, it was one of the "cleanest" nuclear bombs ever created, generating a very low amount of fallout relative to its yield). There was a strong incentive for this feature regression, as most of the fallout from a test of the bomb would fall on populated Soviet territory.\n\nThe bomb, weighing 27 tonnes, was so large (8 meters long by 2 m in diameter) that the Tu-95 had to have its bomb bay doors and wing fuel tanks removed. The bomb was attached to an 800 kg fall retardation parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45 km from ground zero. Failing such retardation, the bomb would have either reached its planned detonation altitude so fast it would have turned the test into a suicide mission, or crashed into the ground at high speed, with unpredictable results.\n\nThe Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 a.m., located approximately at 73.85° N 54.50° E [2], over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea. The bomb was dropped from an altitude of 10,500 m, and designed to detonate at a height of 4,000 m over the land surface (4,200 m over sea level) by barometric sensors.\n\nThe original USA estimate of the yield was 57 Mt, but since 1991 all Russian sources have stated its yield as "only" 50 Mt. Nonetheless, Khrushchev warned in a filmed speech to the Communist parliament of the existence of a 100 Mt bomb (technically the design was capable of this yield). The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen 1,000 km away. The heat could have caused third degree burns at a distance of 100 km. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 60 km high and 30–40 km wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, even breaking windows there.[citation needed] Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 km away. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the earth.\n\nSince 50 Mt is 2.1×1017 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was a power of about 5.3×1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This is equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun. The detonation of Tsar Bomba therefore qualifies, even to this day, as being the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity. By contrast, the largest weapon ever produced by the United States, the now-decommissioned B41, had a predicted maximum yield of 25 Mt, and the largest nuclear device ever tested by the USA (Castle Bravo) yielded 15 Mt...\n\n...amazing!\n