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 Originally Posted by chemist
The reason Einstein's equation is important to atomic bombs or nuclear power funnily enough is the C, because the resulting energy releases at the speed of light.
Which makes the energy a very big number
if c=299792458 m/s
then c^2 = 8.98755179×10^16
So a small mass can make a lot of energy.
"Somehow the popular notion took hold long ago that Einstein's theory of relativity, in particular his famous equation E = mc2, plays some essential role in the theory of fission. Albert Einstein had a part in alerting the United States government to the possibility of building an atomic bomb, but his theory of relativity is not required in discussing fission. The theory of fission is what physicists call a non-relativistic theory, meaning that relativistic effects are too small to affect the dynamics of the fission process significantly."
-Robert Serber of the Manhattan Project
"While Serber's view of the strict lack of need to use mass–energy equivalence in designing the atomic bomb is correct, it does not take into account the pivotal role which this relationship played in making the fundamental leap to the initial hypothesis that large atoms were energetically allowed to split into approximately equal parts (before this energy was in fact measured)."
-Wiki
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