Fusion

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Term Paper Title	Fusion
# of Words	1778
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	7.11

Fusion

Fusion

For centuries, humankind has looked at the stars, and for just as many years
humankind has tried to explain the existence of those very same stars.  Were
they holes in an enormous canvas that covered the earth?  Were they fire-flies
that could only be seen when the Apollo had parked his chariot for the night?
There seemed to be as many explanations for the stars as there were stars
themselves.  Then one day an individual named Galileo Galilei made an astounding
discovery: the stars were replicas of our own sun, only so far away that they
seemed as large as pin pricks to the naked eye.  This in turn gave rise to many
more questions. What keeps the stars burning?  Have they always been glowing, or
are they born like humans, and thus will they die?  The answers to all these
questions can be summed up in two words; stellar fusion. Therefore one can begin
to understand the stars by understanding what fusion is, how it affects the life
of a star, and what happens to a star when fusion can no longer occur. The first
question one must ask is, "What is fusion?"  One simple way of explaining it is
taking two balls of clay and mashing them into one, creating a new, larger
particle from the two.  Now replace those balls of clay with sub-atomic
particles, and when they meld, release an enormous amount of energy.  This is
fusion.  There is currently three known variations of fusion: the proton-proton
reaction (Figure 1.1), the carbon cycle (Figure 1.2), and the triple-alpha
process (Figure 1.3).  In the proton-proton reaction, a proton (the positively
charged nucleus of a hydrogen atom) is forced so close to another proton (within
a tenth of a trillionth of an inch) that a short range nuclear force known as
the strong force takes over and forces the two protons to bond together (1). One
proton then decays into a neutron (a particle with the same mass as a proton,
but with no charge), a positron (a positively charged particle with almost no
mass), and a neutrino (a particle with almost no mass, and no charge).  The
neutrino and positron then radiate off, releasing heat energy.  The remaining
particle is known as a deuteron, or the nucleus of the hydrogen isotope
deuterium.  This deuteron is then fused with another proton, creating a helium
isotope (2).  Then two helium isotopes fuse, creating a helium nucleus and
releasing two protons, which facilitate the chain reaction (3).  This final
split is so violent that one-half of the total fusion energy is car...

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