caraboose

Oops my laptop went critical, it blew up the city.

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STARGATE

We Are Gr33n Machine

09-12-09

ChrisB17

I dont see any problems with small nuclear things. I mean our smoke detectors have nuclear material in them and those are usually fine for awhile.

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The AM3 motherboard buyers guide and help thread.

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Thank you veterans.

B-80

what do you mean "go" critical mass? nothing goes critical mass. you either have enough (equal to or greater than critical mass) or you don't. I know nothing about smoke detectors though or whats inside of them, but my guess is, if they held the ability to feasibly make a nuke.....they would find a new way to make them....

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karcus01

Nice, i hope they charge fast too, i dont wanna charge for 400 hours to get a 200 hour battery life. i mean, its like having a tank in an RPG game with a ****load of HP, but no regen...

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How can gamers have no life? We have infinite lives!

I am 56% addicted to Counterstrike. What about you?

ChrisB17

I think some people in this thread need to wiki how a nuclear explosion happens. Alot of wrong theories.

__________________
The AM3 motherboard buyers guide and help thread.

Member of the OCN Diablo III Club

Thank you veterans.

urgrandpasdog

Am I the only person who immediately thought of Artemis Fowl when I read this?

aweir

This just in: Energizer bunny files for unemployment.....

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Liquid Silicon --> 80%
Some people buy expensive cars so they can drive faster. We buy expensive computers so we can fold faster.

Col. Newman

fail

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DDR != GDDR, DDR2 != GDDR2, DDR3 != GDDR3, DDR4 != GDDR4, DDR5 != GDDR5
So STOP using the terms interchangeably people

og4tcm

A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (e.g. the nuclear fission cross-section), its density, its shape, its enrichment, its purity, its temperature, and its surroundings.

The material in smoke detectors is Americium. Americium is also fissile; the critical mass for an unreflected sphere of 241Am is approximately 60 kilograms. It is unlikely that Americium would be used as a weapons material, as its minimum critical mass is considerably larger than that of more readily obtained plutonium or uranium isotopes.

Smoke detectors contain about 37 kBq or 1 µCi of radioactive americium 241 (241Am), corresponding to about 0.3 µg of the isotope.

Ok, so lets do the math here... .3 µg (micrograms) of Am 241 per smoke detector, and to attain critical mass you require 60 Kg... thats 2,000,000 smoke detectors. Yeah, good luck stockpiling those somewhere to detonate them.

And excuse my grammer before, I should have stated in order to 'attain' critical mass, not go. Reaching critical mass in conventional nuclear weapon requires two seperate pieces to either collide, or having a shaped charge surrounding a single volume of material explode, forcing the material to reach criticality.

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Thororin

Wouldn't that still result to a very small Nuclear reaction?
At least compared to conventional nuclear weapons, sure the explosives needed for the reaction will make a loud bang, but the reaction itself would remain relatively small.


And a note on topic, batteries with huge capacity could be the next thing for small portable devices.