How the Demon Core Killed a Man in 9 Days

The demon core is a legendary sphere of plutonium gallium alloy that was designed to be - when encased in neutron reflectors like beryllium or tungsten - just a hair away from achieving critical mass and releasing massive amounts of radiation.

That idea of making something that is just a tiny accident away from releasing deadly anything was - in retrospect - perhaps a mistake. 

The demon core became known as such because of two deadly incidents, the second of which is retold in the above video, fictionalized in the below clip from the movie Fat Man and Little Boy, and more thoroughly examined in the third video from Kyle Hill.

Check all the videos out and maybe remember not to build a gun that shoots bullets out in every direction while giving it a hair trigger, eh?

The Unknow Phase of Matter

God lord but Steve Mould is a brilliant communicator of science.

I've never really understood super critical fluids - even though I've posted about them before, but today's video - especially the part from about 10:20 through 14:20 or so - makes for a brilliant explanation of why fluids go supercritical at higher temperatures.

The use of the entropy and potential energy graphs in combination lays out the argument for supercriticality brilliantly.

Thanks, Steve...thteve.

AtomAnimation

 

That right there is a screenshot from AtomAnimation, a website that seems to do nothing more than provide animations of Bohr models for any element with any combination of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

It's kind of fun to play around with, though I warn you that the larger atoms take a decent amount of time to render and seemed to slow my browser down a bit while they were running.