KitemanSA wrote:D Tibbets wrote: There are two many inconsistencies between my and your understanding that I will give up. Except to point out once again. Ni62 has the highest binding energy- this is given as the energy required to tear it apart to individual nucleons (protons and neutrons). It is not the energy needed to tear off only one nucleon. That is given by tables. If Ni62 has 8.95 MeV (example, not accurate) and Ni61 has 8.94 MeV, then it would require 0.01 MeV to remove a neutron from the Ni62, or conversely liberate 0.01 MeV to go from Ni61 to Ni62.
And this shows where your fundamental misunderstanding lies.
Using your numbers (reasonable approximations), if 61Ni has 8.94 MeV/N and 62Ni has 8.95 MeV/N (where N=# of nucleuons) then 61Ni has 61*8.94=
545.34 MeV per nucleus and 62Ni has
62*8.95=554.28 MeV per nucleus and adding a proton (~0MeV) to 61Ni (545.34) resulting in 62Ni (554.28 MeV) releases {554.28 - 0 - 545.34 = 8.94} MeV, NOT .01 !!! This is a lot of energy. MORE
per reaction than D+D!
Please look at the Y-axis label. "average binding energy
per nucleon(MeV)"
IF you can attach a nucleon to a nucleus you WILL RELEASE ENERGY and excite that nucleus. Period. Absolutely without doubt, end of story. BUT what that nucleus does with said energy is what defines what we normally experience. If you add a nucleon to a nucleus that is on the down-hill side of the B/N graph (>~Fe) and do it without providing an alternate path to shed the excitation, my understanding is that in the vast majority of cases the excited nucleus just sheds an equivalent nucleon and drops happily back to ground state, no net change at all. You can't "fuse" beyond ~Fe...
without providing conditions other than normal. Supernovae provide such conditions.
PERHAPS so does a properly tuned polariton.
Thanks for actually posting the graph. I admit there is some ambiguity.
But, cannot you see that the binding energy builds to a peak, and then starts falling.
Looking at only the Y- axis, The Binding Energy per Nucleon it would seem that any additional addition reaises energy, even if the magnitude increases, then decreases. Also keep in mind that this represents the energy nessisary to disasemble the nucleons from each other. That is why the invwersion of the graph is more representitive of the energy content differencees. Consider the x-axis - The Number of Nucleons. That the graph is not a flat line implies that the binding energy per nucleon changes as a funtion of the number of nucleons.. Using the inverted graph it is obvous that Ni62 retains the least amount of energy once all of it's nucleons are striped away- what was the Ni62 retains the least energy. That means that the most energy per nucleon is released at that point.
On one side of this peak (or valley) if inverted so that it looks more like a potential well- or energy well. the slope is positive, on the other side the slope is negative.
Choose any two points- elements. Starting from hydrogen, any other nucleus will have higher binding energy- will release energy as the nucleons are added. This is your view and is true in this limited regard. But now consider three elements- hydrogen carbon and nickel- as they are built each subsequent element will result in the release of energy. But going from carbo to nickel will release less energy than going from hydrogen to carbon. . Add a 4th element- eg lead, The releasable energy content (the binding energy) is of course much more than hydrogen. But it is less than the elements near nickel. Say you remove one proton so that the new nucleus has an atomic number that is one less. Plot it on the graph, and you'll see that it has a higher binding energy than the lead atom. Thus, by definition energy was releast- this is fission. Instead add a proton to the lead and plot the new element on the graph- the binding energy of the heavier element is less- there is less possible energy release if the atom is reduced to it's componet nucleons. This is fusion and and costs energy.
The confusion is that you are considering total dissasembly of atoms to the starting point of hydrogen. Nature does not work this way. Nucleosynthesis and dissasembly works through messy steps- adding or subtracting single protons, neutrons, alphas and ocassionally larger steps. There are sometimes excited state intermediates which might contain more aviable energy, but as intermediates these represent energy storage- batteries) and is unrelated to the final gains or losses.
To build any element heavier than Ni62, you essentially have to go through Ni62. In reaching Ni62 you you have reached the high point in harvestable energy. Approaching it from either side produces energy balance changes that are represented by the slope of the graph and whether that slope is positive or negative.
What you said about the energy per nucleon is true, and the sum of the mucleons energy is also true,. But, you are comparing the magnitude of the atoms binding energy with hydrogen, not with its neighbor. The energy difference between neighbors can be directly extracted from the graph (or tables) by measuring the difference in the Y axis position with it;s neighbor that you are comparing it to. That is the binding energy difference between the chosen examples, and this energy difference (plus or minus) is what is relavent.
Instead of a bowel...err... bowl analogy, consider a skyscraper building. with 62 basement levels and ~ 140 upper floors. The ground floor (62) is the lowest energy floow- the low point on the inverted binding energy graph). If you walk into the building from outside and drop a ball down an elevator shaft to the bottom most basement level you wold gain 62 units of energy. If you dropped a ball from the 20th floor you would gain82 units of energy. But first you would have to carry the ball up to the 20th floor, so your net gain over dropping the ball from the ground floor would be zero. Next talk consider that the curves of the binding energy chart are generally exponential, not linear. In the sky scraper this could be represented as the height of each floor increasing as you approach the lowest basement floor (hydrogen) and is more gradually increasing as you climb above the ground floor.
There is no express elevator, You cannot go from the lowest basement directly to the highest floors . You have to stop at every floor and calculate the energy you have gained or lost on each floor....
I'm still working on how this analogy could represent the negative energy balance ofballs above the ground floor. I thin the electromagnetic ( or electro- weak and/ or weak force forces could be represented as policemen on each floor above the ground floor. There are even more policemen on each higher floor and they do not want you dropping balls on peoples heads, so they chase you. You have to run around on each floor and expend increaseing amounts of energy to avoid capture before you get a chance to drop the ball. You are still dropping the ball from higher floors, but you have expended more energy climbing to that floor and running around than you gained by the increased height.
Actually there are policemen on the lower floors also, but there are so few of them around that it takes little effort to avoid them, especially at the lowest basement levels.
If there were not these policemen (electromagnetic forces that become more significant as the nucleus size increases and the charge increases to such an extent that excess energy is required to hold the larger nucleus together. This subtracts from the strong force energy that continues to grow, but at slower rates- the binding energy is the sum of these opposing forces) the binding energy graft would continue to grow to infinity. There would be no limit of the size / mass of a nucleus. There would be no peak in the nuclear binding energy. Ther would be no stars, or even atoms as we know them.
The only limit that would limit the atoms growth the the Coulomb repulsion (electromagnetic force) that inhibits the external protons from getting close enough to the nucleus for the strong force to take over.
And, of course the electromagnetic force does not end at the border of the nucleus. It also acts within the nucleus. This physics interaction is what makes Ni62 the highest energy nucleon. And it is why more energy is required to overcome the coulomb barrior in heavier nuclei. And it is why much heavier nuclei tend to fall apart (are unstable). The weak force also plays a role, but it is the same as the electromagnetic force (at least at high enough energies).
In LENR reactions using a catalyst like nickel is supposed to reduce coulomb repulsion through some type of electron screening. If it works for allowing deuterons to fuse together, they would have to work perhaps 100-to 1000 times better for hydrogen - nickel fusion reactions to occur. disregarding whether the reaction would occur at useful rates the energy balance difference would be perhaps 0.01 MeV. To achieve the reaction the proton may need to have KE of perhaps 0.1 to 10 MeV to penetrate the coulomb barrier. The input may be 10 MeV, while the output might be +/- 0.01 MeV. The other losses from Bremmstrung, nonelastic collisions, cyclotron radiation, containment losses, etc may add up to several MeV. The energy picture is not good by a long stretch. The catalyzing effects may decrease the input energy to a fraction of an eV, that would still leave the question of whether the reaction itself was exothermic or endothermic.
It would help considerably if anyone had unambiguously demonstrated any type of useful cold fusion, even the much easier and much higher energy gain fusion of light elements.
Note that I included the 'useful' condition. Of course cold fusion of light elements occurs at room temperature. But statistically you mighe have to wait a few million years for one measurable light element fusion to occur in a gallon of reactants. You might have to wait a few billion years for a fusion of a Nickel and hydrogen.
I don't know if this is true, but the only claim of measured fusion rates of relatively easy to fuse D-D that does not fall under the vague results of the LENR camp is the ~300 eV (~ 3 million degrees) of the copper block machine by Bussard, etel.
Finally, again I urge people to use the reality test. what if you can add pressurized hydrogen to powdered nickel, even if some other ingredient is used to speed the reaction. In the Earths upper and lower crust and mantle, there is plenty of nickel and hydrogen, and the pressure can be way more than 20-40 bars. The reaction rate may be a billion or even a trillion times slower, but the amount of the ingredients in close proximity would be proportionately billions if not trillions of times greater (or even more). The heat output and/ or radiation levels would be obvious.
Astronomy , stellar characteristics and evolution observations are total repudiations of excess energy generation by fusing past Nickel. Of course elements can be built past nickel, but it costs energy to do so. Heavier elements like U235 are batteries, they can release energy, but only the energy fist stored in them by endothermic fusion past nickel. Note I said past. Nickel. If you could immediately combine protons and neutrons to U235, without intermediates, then you could consider it an energy gain all the way (which it is), but the intermediates have more energy (Ni62) gain. Proceeding past this intermediate does not give any energy advantage, it actually cuts into the energy profit.
The same can be said for hydrogen, It stores energy that can be released by fusion- up to a point. But this energy had to come from somewhere in the first place. This energy obviously came from the Quark soup and before that the Big Bang. But ,where did the energy of the Big Bang come from?
Why do not Quarks accumulate into unending collections. The principles are the same. The binding energy of quarks is much higher than the binding energy of nuclei. It has to be because there is an equilibrium that is represented by the lowest energy state (which is similar to the lowest energy state of Ni62 that would be represented by the inverse of the Nuclear Binding energy graph. You could build larger quark groupings, but you would have to add energy (a lot of energy ) to do so. The amount of energy needed to maintain a state above equilibrium is directly related to the lifetime of the state. So much energy is needed to hold excess quarks together that the resultant half life would be extremely, extremely small, possibly (absolutely?) less than the Plank time. Even the proton is not at the lowest equilibrium state. At least in some theories it is not stable and has a half life of a few hundred billion years. I'm not sure what it breaks down to (pure energy- photons?). Some experiments have been looking for it, and as I have not heard of any detections (it would be big news) the predictions are continuing to be extended. I don't know at what point the theory... er... hypothesis has to be abandoned, if ever.
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
