In a dam's generator, falling water spins the coil. Which energy transfer happens in the generator?
Fenella tours a nuclear power station. The tour starts at a sealed reactor hall and ends at a spinning generator. Between the fuel's missing mass and the generator's wires runs one unbroken energy ledger.
You saw where a nuclear reaction's released energy comes from: the products end up with slightly less mass, and that missing mass leaves the books as released energy. You also saw the controlled chain reaction: a reactor releases that energy at a steady rate. This lesson follows the energy from the fuel's mass to the generator, one ledger entry at a time.
Start the ledger at the fuel. Its entry is mass-energy.
Each fission converts a little of the fuel's mass, and the fragments fly apart at enormous speed: the mass-energy has become the fragments' kinetic energy.
The fragments crash into nearby atoms in the fuel, and the core heats up: the fragments' kinetic energy has become the core's thermal energy.
The hot core boils water into fast-moving steam, and the steam spins the turbine blades: the thermal energy has become the kinetic energy of the moving steam and spinning turbine blades.
The spinning blades turn the generator, and the generator transfers that kinetic energy to electrical energy.
Over a year, the fuel's total mass has fallen, and the books still balance: the lost mass's energy has left as electrical energy plus waste heat.
This lesson stops at the generator. You have already traced the wires onward, from power station to plug, in the magnetism topic.
Trace a fission station's energy from its fuel to its generator, one ledger entry per step.
The fuel's entry is mass-energy.
Fission converts some of that mass, and the fragments carry it as kinetic energy.
The fragments' crashes heat the core: thermal energy.
The hot core makes fast-moving steam that spins the turbine blades: kinetic energy again.
The generator transfers the blades' kinetic energy to electrical energy.
Mass-energy of the fuel, kinetic energy of the fragments, thermal energy of the core, kinetic energy of the moving steam and spinning turbine blades, electrical energy from the generator.
After a year of running, a station's fuel has measurably less mass. Account for the missing mass on the energy ledger.
The missing mass converted to released energy inside the reactor.
Part of that energy left the station as electrical energy.
The rest left as waste heat.
The fuel's lost mass ends up as electrical energy plus waste heat, and the ledger balances.
In a fission power station, fragments from each fission fly apart at enormous speed. Which energy do the fragments carry at that moment?
The flying fragments crash into atoms around them, and the reactor core heats up. The fragments' kinetic energy has become which energy?
In the station's energy chain, which entry comes just before the generator's electrical energy?
Which order do the ledger entries of a fission power station follow, from fuel to generator?
Over a year of running, a station's fuel ends with measurably less mass. On the conservation ledger, where has the missing mass's energy ended up?
All the electrical energy a fission station sends out began as which ledger entry?