The Physical Principles Of Thermonuclear Explosive Devices

How the chemical engineering behemoth that brought us Teflon, Kevlar, Lycra, Freon, and more shaped the culture of postwar America. What do nylon stockings and atomic bombs have in common? DuPont. The chemical firm of DuPont de Nemours pioneered the development of both nylon and plutonium, among countless other innovations, playing an important role in the rise of mass consumption and the emergence of the notorious “military-industrial complex.” In this fascinating account of the lives and careers of Du Pont’s chemical engineers, Pap A. Ndiaye deftly illustrates the contribution of industry to the genesis of a dominant post–World War II “American model” connecting prosperity with security. The consumer and military dimensions of twentieth-century American history are often studied separately. Ndiaye reunites them by examining Du Pont’s development of nylon, which symbolized a new way of life, and plutonium, which was synonymous with annihilation. Reflecting on the experiences and contributions of the company’s engineers and physicists, Ndiaye traces Du Pont’s transformation into one of the corporate models of American success.

This is a comprehensive book which describes the three essential parts of what is known as "Inertial Confinement Fusion": the way thermonuclear burn takes place in non-magnetized, magnetized and fusion-fission hybrid assemblies; the pulse power ignition technology (nuclear, electrical, optical and chemical); and the applications of inertial confinement fusion technology for peaceful nuclear energy on Earth and in space. An integrated single text of such extensive technical width is a rare find, and younger generations of nuclear engineers any physicists will appreciate this book as a companion to their traditional textbooks.

Physics and Nuclear Arms Today is a collection of the best articles written about the arms race which appeared in Physics Today between 1976 and 1989. The articles explore a wide variety of topical issues such as the effects of nuclear weapons, nuclear testing, offensive strategic weapons, defensive SDI or Star Wars weapons, nuclear nonproliferation and the social responsibility of scientists as well as a wide selection of articles which chronicle the history of nuclear weaponry. The authors also represent a broad spectrum of well known names in the physics community including Andrei Sakharov, Sidney Drell, Wolfgang Panofsky, Edward Teller, Frank von Hippel, Victor Weiskopf, and Freeman Dyson. Of interest to physicists interested in arms control issues, nuclear weapons, and international relations; science and defense policy makers.

This ground-breaking reference provides an overview of key concepts in dimensional analysis, and then pushes well beyond traditional applications in fluid mechanics to demonstrate how powerful this tool can be in solving complex problems across many diverse fields. Of particular interest is the book’s coverage of dimensional analysis and self-similarity methods in nuclear and energy engineering. Numerous practical examples of dimensional problems are presented throughout, allowing readers to link the book’s theoretical explanations and step-by-step mathematical solutions to practical implementations.

Dimensional Analysis and Physical Similarity are well understood subjects, and the general concepts of dynamical similarity are explained in this book. Our exposition is essentially different from those available in the literature, although it follows the general ideas known as Pi Theorem. There are many excellent books that one can refer to; however, dimensional analysis goes beyond Pi theorem, which is also known as Buckingham’s Pi Theorem. Many techniques via self-similar solutions can bound solutions to problems that seem intractable. A time-developing phenomenon is called self-similar if the spatial distributions of its properties at different points in time can be obtained from one another by a similarity transformation, and identifying one of the independent variables as time. However, this is where Dimensional Analysis goes beyond Pi Theorem into self-similarity, which has represented progress for researchers. In recent years there has been a surge of interest in self-similar solutions of the First and Second kind. Such solutions are not newly discovered; they have been identified and named by Zel’dovich, a famous Russian Mathematician in 1956. They have been used in the context of a variety of problems, such as shock waves in gas dynamics, and filtration through elasto-plastic materials. Self-Similarity has simplified computations and the representation of the properties of phenomena under investigation. It handles experimental data, reduces what would be a random cloud of empirical points to lie on a single curve or surface, and constructs procedures that are self-similar. Variables can be specifically chosen for the calculations.