What is the difference in the atomic structure of hydrogen and helium?
What is the difference in the atomic structure of hydrogen and helium?
A helium atom consists of a nucleus containing two positively charged protons and two neutrons, encircled by two orbiting electrons which carry a negative charge. A hydrogen atom has just one proton and one electron. The difference is that the nucleus is 4.1 times heavier than normal.
What does hydrogen and helium do for the Sun?
Hydrogen atoms are compressed and fuse together, creating helium. This process is called nuclear fusion. As the gases heat up, atoms break apart into charged particles, turning the gas into plasma. The energy, mostly in the form of gamma-ray photons and neutrinos, is carried into the radiative zone.
What happens to the mass of the Sun as hydrogen is converted to helium?
In the core of the Sun hydrogen is being converted into helium. This is called nuclear fusion. The difference between the mass of 4 H atoms and 1 He atom is 0.02862 AMU which is only 0.71% of the original mass. This small fraction of the mass is converted into energy.
What happens to helium in the Sun?
What happens to the Helium? Most stars, after converting a significant portion of their hydrogen to helium undergo an internal change. After the red giant phase, the Sun will lose its outer layers leaving behind its helium-rich core (called white dwarf), which will gradually cool over the lifetime of the Universe.
What era is the universe made up of 75% hydrogen and 25% helium?
the Big Bang
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, accounting for about 75 percent of its normal matter, and was created in the Big Bang. Helium is an element, usually in the form of a gas, that consists of a nucleus of two protons and two neutrons surrounded by two electrons.
What are the 3 steps in the hydrogen to helium process?
The steps are:
- Two protons within the Sun fuse.
- A third proton collides with the formed deuterium.
- Two helium-3 nuclei collide, creating a helium-4 nucleus plus two extra protons that escape as two hydrogen.
Is the Sun hot enough for fusion?
As explained earlier, the fusion process begins with two protons coming together and one up-quark turning into a down-quark to create a neutron. This is around 200 times hotter than the core of the Sun, so not hot enough for fusion!
How long until the Sun runs out of fuel?
about 5 billion years
But in about 5 billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen. Our star is currently in the most stable phase of its life cycle and has been since the birth of our solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago.
What keeps the Sun from exploding?
The inward pressure that keeps a star from exploding is the gravitational attraction of the gas mantle surrounding the core (which is most of the volume of the Sun, and is very hot but does not burn itself).
What makes up the structure of a helium atom?
The structure of Hydrogen and Helium atom I based on similar formations that appear in nature. Two Hydrogen atoms form Helium atom. In every formation the primary hydrogen photon became energetic properties but second gravity-magnetic properties. Pictures from space {taken from Google.com}
How much hydrogen and helium are in the Sun?
Six hundred million tons of hydrogen are converted into 596 million tons of helium in the Sun every second. The remaining 4 million tons is given off as heat and light energy. 2 In that sense, the first thing that comes to mind when the Sun is mentioned is the letters H (hydrogen) and He (helium) that stand for the Sun.
How is the composition of the sun determined?
Solar Structure and Composition The Sun is constantly fusing hydrogen into helium, but don’t expect the ratio of hydrogen to helium to change anytime soon. The Sun is 4.5 billion years old and has converted about half of the hydrogen in its core into helium. It still has about 5 billion years before the hydrogen runs out.
What’s the difference between helium and diatomic gas?
The key difference between hydrogen and helium is that hydrogen is a diatomic gas, while helium is a monatomic gas. Helium has a fully filled s orbital (1s2), but in hydrogen, there is only one electron (1s1), so it is unstable.