MacGyver Season 1 Episode 21 Science Notes: Cigar Cutter

Dirty Bomb

It’s not a Mac-Hack (I assume that’s clear), but let me just explain the difference between a nuclear bomb and a dirty bomb.

A nuclear bomb uses a nuclear reaction to create energy. If you take some large mass element (let’s just say plutonium) and spit it into two pieces, you get some stuff. Obviously you get at least two smaller atoms. But you also get some neutrons and stuff. However, if you added up the mass of all the stuff after the split, it would be slightly less than the mass of the original plutonium. This lost mass is accounted for in energy. Here is the energy-mass relationship.

The “c” is the speed of light. This says that you get a BUNCH of energy for just a little bit of mass and this is the basis for a nuclear fission reaction. For a nuclear bomb, the split creates neutrons that can also split more atoms which produces MORE neutrons and more splits. Oh, the energy and the left over pieces tend to make stuff radioactive.

The dirty bomb also uses radioactive material. However, the main explosion is not a nuclear reaction but instead a more conventional chemical-based bomb. The bomb includes radioactive material that gets spread around from the explosion. It’s dirty. Yes, it’s bad-but it’s not a nuclear explosion. Also, these are pretty easy to make since you just need a normal bomb and some radioactive material.

Parsecs and Time and Distance