ShmoopTube

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No you're not here shmoop er's we know the questions

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that have been keeping you up at night and we're

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here to answer him I'll soon you'll never have to

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wonder about why electrons generate power when they moved from

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adam adam or y particles even have energy in the

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first place not questions that will keep you up at

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night There everybody's a critic Well they were keeping someone

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up at night A certain albert einstein And lucky for

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us you figured it out The answer surprisingly simple e

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equals m c squared In other words energy and matter

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are the same thing And good thing we figure that

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out because in the last two centuries human technology and

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human knowledge of energy have taken huge leaps forward harnessing

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wind and water allowed cities to grow and you know

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have huge populations who need to be bed that steam

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and coal started the industrial revolution and oil and electricity

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spread mechanical advances to most of humanity during the twentieth

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century At that point we pretty much thought that all

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possible energy sources had been found harnessed and put to

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work We're like work here's done fellas All innovation is

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over Nothing else to do but sit back Chow on

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tacos and watch tv Boy where we run in the

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mid twentieth century we discovered an energy source with the

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power to annihilate entire cities or provide electricity for millions

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of home The first time in human history our energy

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no longer came solely from the sun It's a matter

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of fact we discovered what powers the sun in the

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first place Yep We discovered nuclear power which turns matter

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into pure energy And yeah we freaked out a little

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bit We're still freaking out It's Intense stuff Some people

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thought it was the end of the world Others thought

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it was the miracle cure for all of our energy

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problems Either way it was new It was unheard of

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And it was kind of scary Like the first time

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you had a crush on someone except not like that

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at all months Nuclear power talk about anyway around nineteen

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hundred people believe that adam's were totally solid like unimaginably

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tiny pool balls Remember all that stuff about electricity and

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moving electrons Yeah they had no idea what they were

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doing but hey they couldn't even see adam's until the

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invention of the electron microscope in nineteen thirty one so

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give him a break Atoms are not solid They look

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more like a mini solar system with a nucleus instead

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of a son and electrons instead of planets Even more

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alarmingly adams don't always stick together Sometimes atoms decay and

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lose particles well This decay creates radiation a waves of

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nasty energy and particles Radioactive decay happens in small amounts

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all the time but hey depress everyone nobody freak out

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Every piece of matter around us is not out to

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kill us with radiation brings out that when adam's fall

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apart they released energy And if we smash them on

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purpose we can really make a lot of this stuff

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the first time that human beings intentionally split and adam

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was in nineteen thirty eight when two german scientist named

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hahn and strassman blasted uranium atoms with other particles while

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less scientific minds were blasting cans for fun Hahn and

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strassman had noticed that a surge of energy happened when

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uranium atoms or smacked around only they could make it

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happen over and over and over again In a chain

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reaction they could have produced unimaginable amounts of energy and

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after the first nuclear reaction was created people naturally wondered

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if nuclear power could be used as a weapon Because

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it was the nineteen forties the entire world was at

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war again and nuclear power would have been a pretty

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sweet trump card Well as oppenheimer the head scientist of

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america's nuclear bomb program said after successfully setting off the

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first avon i am become death the destroyer of worlds

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melodramatic but was not exaggerating Once again humanity had taken

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a potentially beneficial new discovery Hand made it lethal Insert

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a complete lack of surprise here This is why we 00:04:06.405 --> [endTime] can't have nice things

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