Energy: Nuclear Fission Demonstrations

While we're on the topic of explaining nuclear energy, you can find some recorded nuclear fission demonstrations on YouTube. I know many schools have blocked YouTube, but I hope it's still useful to some of you.  

My favorite video comes from Touchstone Energy.  While not recorded for scientific purposes, the sheer size of the demonstration is impressive.  You'll have to ignore the sales pitch, but it's non-offensive and pretty short. 



And, just for fun, here's another commercial video along the same lines. 

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Energy: Understanding Nuclear Energy

I may be a bit late in getting this to you, but hopefully it's useful to someone out there....

In light of recent events in Japan, or just in the course or your curriculum, you may be looking for ways to help your students understand nuclear energy. 

I just stumbled across this publication, Nuclear Experiments You Can Do, from the Charles Edison Fund..

The pdf file includes simple models/demonstrations for splitting an atom and chain reactions, as well as more
advanced demonstrations related to nuclear energy and radioactivity.

I wanted to pass this your way as quickly as possible, since it is a timely topic.  As a result, I haven't looked through the other experiments available, but they could very well be worth taking a look at.

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