the Energy of a paper clip is equal to the energy of that of an atomic bomb, so their is no way one can extract the energy from the paperclips unless we were in hell. How would one when extract the energy of a paper clip in the first place.

10/14/2005 6:08:54 PM

Well that certainly blew my mind

10/14/2005 6:11:51 PM

e = mc^2

energy equals mass times the speed of light squared
mass of a nuclear warhead is larger than mass of a paperclip

Quote :

"the Energy of a paper clip is equal to the energy of that of an atomic bomb"

anyone else see a problem with this statement?

10/14/2005 6:18:47 PM

other than the fact that a physics major posted that?

10/14/2005 6:19:56 PM

so? i'm a mechanical engineering student...should i be expected to know everything about cars?
because i don't.


i could, however, see if she said "per unit mass," but she didn't. which is why i'm pointing it out

[Edited on October 14, 2005 at 6:25 PM. Reason : ]

10/14/2005 6:23:13 PM

no ur not but how can one not know that the mass of an atomic bomb is significantly greater than the mass of a paper clip? or better yet: how can one assume that the mass of a paper clip and the mass of an atomic bomb are equal?

10/14/2005 6:26:34 PM

Quote :

"But for the antimatter bomb we are actually talking about two grams: one gram of antimatter, annihilating with one gram of normal matter, and therefore you would release twice that amount! You need only half a gram of antimatter to be equally destructive as the Hiroshima bomb, the half gram of normal matter is easy enough to find."

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

Quote :

"The mass of a regular paper clip is about a half of gram."

http://king.prps.k12.ca.us/prhs/pasohigh/classes/Fairbank/public.www/homepage/chemist/metric/metricmas.htm

So an antimatter paper clip could produce as much energy as a rather weak atomic bomb.

10/14/2005 7:16:54 PM

Good thing all of my antimatter paper clips are locked up in the supply cabinet.

Seriously, what kind of fucking argument is this anyway?

10/14/2005 7:20:37 PM

Quote :

"The Mk I "Little Boy" was 10 feet (3 m) in length, 28 inches (71 cm) wide and weighed 8,900 lb (4000 kg). The design used a gun arrangement to explosively force a sub-critical mass of uranium-235 and three U-235 target rings together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. It contained 60 kg U-235, of which 0.7 kg underwent fission. The uranium was enriched at the massive plants in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the Manhattan Project. The yield of "Little Boy" was about 13 kilotons of TNT equivalent in explosive force, i.e. 5.5×1013 joules = 55 TJ (terajoules."

I calculate the mass-energy of a paperclip of 1 gram to be 89.8755 TJ.

The amount of uranium-235 is not the weight of the core of the bomb, and certainly not the bomb itself. Then not even all the U235 in the bomb fissions, that 0.7 kg represents the amount that does fission. In the fission, the mass of the U235 does not go to energy, not even the mass of any particles goes to fission, the only mass that goes to energy is the mass difference between Uranium and the lighter elements that it fissions into, which is small, near miniscule compared to the mass of the atom itself.

Assuming a 200 MeV yield for a fission, i calculate that the energy released by the bomb would be 57.48 TJ. That gives supprising accuracy to the 55 TJ quoted in the Wikibooks article considering the carless error in the number 200 itself and the fact that that is a fission yield usually used is for reactors subject to conditions differing greatly from the bomb.


In case the great world we live in still doesn't make sense to you, I should clarify that there are no means you have close to available to turn that paperclip in front of you to upteen terajoules. The ease with which we can turn the precious mass difference in Uranium into energy is a extremely rare gift from the universe to us earthdwellers. Compare to the technical difficulity of creating fussion power, and it's child's play, but yet remains as one of the most difficult engineering tasks immaginable. To seperate U235 from U238 is like finding a peice of hay in a haystack, that's 1 micro meter shorter than the others. To even talk as if a terrorist can use antimater is beyond ludacrist. To get facilities to build one anit-hyrodgen atom costs unthinkable money, mankind has never created 2 grams of antimater not even close.

But in case you were still wondering, go read a Steven Hawking book. We know from modern theoretical physics that black holes emmit radiation (very strong radiation at that) and can utilize any type of matter in the universe to turn into energy. Existance in the state of energy is still greater entropy that in the state of matter, thus allowing the universe to be more than happy to oblidge to the request provided the proper conditions. I actually recall seeing a picture of someone drawing a black hole around the earth held by a large atroid on a lasso as a proposition for a distant future power source.

So many incredible things that can be done in a relitivistic universe. So few things you as a TWW loser are capable of...

[Edited on October 14, 2005 at 7:32 PM. Reason : ]

10/14/2005 7:25:43 PM

Oh good, another Penzoate thread.

10/14/2005 7:28:58 PM

Quote :

"So few things you as a TWW loser are capable of..."

u lost all credibility and standing with this immature statement. good job.

10/14/2005 7:30:03 PM

you lost all credibility and standing by posting here.

10/14/2005 7:32:57 PM

ahahahahaha nice comeback.

10/14/2005 7:34:30 PM

Eh, we're getting better and better at producting antimatter. We'll get there sooner or later.

10/14/2005 7:35:59 PM

go ahead, argue that a paperclip does not have roughly 90 TJ of rest mass energy. If you win, that means the nature of arguing is broken in that particular case.

But actually, someone go find how much anitmater has been created by humans. I remember hearing numbers on it, but it's not like i'm gona remember them. You can take the first limiting factor that the mass energy of that antimatter is going to be WAY less that the amount of energy that is feasible to use for the project of creating it. I know they've never created enough to power a space mission b/c i've heard discussions of the feesability of it. And that's a very small, not visiable amount of mater.

[Edited on October 14, 2005 at 7:40 PM. Reason : ]

10/14/2005 7:39:15 PM

It's something like 5-10 nanograms a year now, I think. But production will increase.

Especially once the strong AIs are born and decide to help us out.

10/14/2005 7:42:40 PM

One nanogram would be still be like 90 MJ. Still can't see it, but that's a good fucking amount of energy. All of that would be on the order of a megawatt-day, but at 0.7 cents/kW I suppose it would still be only like 200$ of electricity.

10/14/2005 7:49:56 PM

PLEASE KILL THIS WOMAN

AND BY "KILL" I MEAN "SUSPEND"

10/14/2005 9:10:44 PM

This is where Penzoate tipped his/her hand:

http://www.brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=357772&page=1

Quote :

"Anyone selling a mother board thats a pentium 4 for $200-$400?"

10/15/2005 11:53:39 AM

man, computers are so damn cheap these days

10/15/2005 12:17:27 PM

it's pretty cool, because in a nuclear explosion, there is complete baryon conservation

so if you have X protons and Y neutrons, you'll get X protons and Y neutrons

it's only their configuration that changes

so the equation E=mc^2 is really an indications of the Energy extracted from this configurational "mass" (it will still show up as real mass on your scale though, just to be clear)

10/15/2005 2:16:13 PM