Talk:Deuterium
From Academic Kids
If memory serves, isn't the deuterium abundance in the universe one of the supporting arguments for the big bang? I seem to recall reading that deuterium is not produced in stars, only consumed, so it had to come from somewhere else. But I could be wrong which is why I haven't added it to the article - MMGB
Correct. I added the relationship between big bang and deuterium in the article -- User:Roadrunner
I was under the impression that deuterium was formed during the p-p chain of fusion occuring in stars. I thought most of it ended up following the entire chain to become helium but some of it remained as deuterium.
- C. Irvine
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I suspect that the text of this article is misleading in juxtaposing the account of concerns during the World War Two about the availability of heavy water to the German military nuclear research program with the link to the hydrogen bomb. A hydrogen bomb is a fusion weapon which was beyond the immediate aspirations of the research programs of all the belligerent nations. These weapons programs were aimed at creating a fission weapon. Heavy water is useful in this project through it being the ideal moderator. It depletes a neutron flux of its energy while absorbing very few newtrons. Its deuterium outperforms the cheaper substitutes, namely normal hydrogen (in ordinary water or parafin wax) and carbon (in graphite), in this role.
- Alan Peakall
Hello Alan. Thanks for your comments -- but you can improve the article directly. See Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers. Feel free to edit the article yourself. -- Tarquin 18:20 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)
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I am not clear if deuterium molecule being used as a tracer is in the liquid or gaseous state. You tell people in the sciences diatomic molecule, and immediately they think 'gas'. The deuterium is almost surely not solid. In case you are a laymen reading this and you don't already know, the deuterium would require a very low temperature to reach the solid state.
- desolderthis
- I worked with modelling deuterium ice, and the freezing point is between 17 and 18 kelvins. I also added some data for deuterium at that temperature because I had to use it so often. -Mike
My physics handbook says the mass is 2.01410178.
Natural occurance
From the article:
- It occurs naturally as deuterium gas, D2 or 2H2.
Wouldn't it be most common in the form DH (or 2H1H), with D2 being rather more rare? Bryan 05:30, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
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- That does make sense. I did some modelling involving D2 and DT. When it was in the DT form, I had to account for the weight so that there would be more TT at the bottom, most of the DT in the middle and more DD at the top. So according to that, it would make sense that Deuterium would not bind to only Deuterium and because Hydrogen is more common, it should bind with Hydrogen more often. (This same idea should apply to the heavy water comment, which would mean that most heavy water is actually HDO instead of D2O) -Mike
Hello Mike40033, if I correctly understand your table it was saying that tritium (hydrogen-3) is sable. That's not right, with a half-life of 12.4 years it beta decays as:
- 31H → 32He + 0-1β + 00ν
followed by some very soft X-rays from shell rearrangement. Since you already had this on the helium page, I assume it was a typo. Cheers, Securiger 08:10, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
How is deuterium extracted from water?
How is heavy water extracted from water, and how is deuterium extracted from heavy water?
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