User:C alvarez94/sandbox

When the Uranium-238 is hit with a neutron, the result is an uranium isotope, 2 other elements, 3 additional neutrons and a lot of energy. There are 3 different ways this could be achieved, either by gas diffusion, using a centrifuge or by electromagnetic separation.  The way gas diffusion works, is by separating Uranium-235 from Uranium-238 by removing molecules of a lighter isotope through a porous barrier. The lighter isotope passes with ease in contrast to the molecules of a heavier isotope. Repeating this process several thousand times produces a rich amount of Uranium-235.  However, the process of gas diffusion requires a massive plant to store the thousands of tubes and consumed enormous amounts of electricity.  In the case of using a centrifuge, the Uranium gas is passed through a series of centrifuges.  The gas centrifuge consists of a cylindrical rotor located inside a casing, which is spun to create centripetal force thus allowing lighter molecules to move towards the center and higher up while the heavy molecules shift towards the outside and further down.  The gas is then sucked in from the top, where the Uranium-235 is located, and passed on to another centrifuge where the process is repeated once again. After several thousand repetitions, the physicists had an end product of Uranium-235.  The third and final way of separation is by using large electromagnetic loops.  Developed by Ernest O. Lawrence, calutrons were used at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  The Uranium-235 produced there was used in Little Boy, the atomic bomb that was used on 6 August 1945 in Hiroshima.  The way the separation occurs is by accelerating atoms of Uranium using electric fields and then deflected by a magnetic field.  Since the Uranium-238 and Uranium-235 have different masses, the particles separate out into two different beams, striking a plate at different locations.  This again took a massive amount of energy to be able to successfully work.