Thread: The Sun

The sun is made up of plasma, and it undergoes nuclear fusion in order to produce light and heat. Now does the nuclear fusion reaction interact with the particles of the plasma?

Thanks
Isaiah.

Stars such as our Sun are powered by nuclear fusion it is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or 'fuse', to form a single heavier nucleus. During this process, matter is not conserved because some of the mass of the fusing nuclei is converted to energy which is released. The binding energy of the resulting nucleus is greater than the binding energy of each of the nuclei that fused to produce it.

The energy barrier of electrostatic forces must be overcome before fusion can occur. At large distances two naked nuclei repel one another because of the repulsive electrostatic force between their positively charged protons. If two nuclei can be brought close enough together, however, the electrostatic repulsion can be overcome by the attractive nuclear force, which is stronger at close distances.

When a nucleon such as a proton or neutron is added t nucleus, the nuclear force attracts it to other nucleons, but primarily to its immediate neighbours due to the short range of the force. The nucleons in the interior of a nucleus have more neighboring nucleons than those on the surface. Since smaller nuclei have a larger surface area-to-volume ratio, the binding energy per nucleon due to the nuclear force generally increases with the size of the nucleus but approaches a limiting value corresponding to that of a nucleus with a diameter of about four nucleons.

I'm sure though one the other's can probarbly give a more detailed explanation.

Chris, was that your way of saying No?

lol, sorry, I didn't think a one word answer was really a good way of explaining.