Monday, January 19, 2009

I'm still a nerd.

I watched the beginning of this movie, which shows a guy enriching plutonium for a nuclear weapon, and all I could think about were the zillions of inaccuracies.
  • The plutonium was a lime-green LIQUID.
  • They bombarded the plutonium with electrons. Whaaaattt??????
  • Enough static electricity was created in the air to make visible sparks between fingers and metal objects.
  • There was a magnet involved??
  • There was a laser involved--even now, laser techniques for enrichment aren't viable.
  • Nitrogen triiodide would have made a bigger boom and been more red, less blue.
Sigh.

1 comment:

Jay said...

haha.

I've always wanted to do a demo with nitrogen triiodide. Have you seen those videos where they just drop a feather on the powder? Crazy stuff.