Isomers: New way to generate energy

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:
It's a bit like the nuclear analogue of a chemical mixture which is thermodynamically unstable but kinetically stable.

The excited nuclear state is thermodynamically unstable with respect to it's lower energy ground state, but it has to overcome various strong internal interactions in order to reconfigure. The irradiation gives it the boost it needs to overcome the initial barrier.

In a similar way, a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is extremely thermodynamically unstable - it would be a much lower energy configuration as water. However, it will sit around indefinately because energy is required to break up the existing molecules such that they can recombine. It doesn't yet have the energy it needs to overcome this - it's kinetically stable.

Now, throw a spark in there and watch it go...

Or even a catalyst... oh the fun we had with platinum :-D

[bloodline]

PMC wrote:

I see, in the case of an LED light, we supply energy which causes the structure of the filament to become excited and thus convert the energy to radiation... Hence the bright green light I see coming from the LED on my monitor. Or indeed the burst of X-ray radiation from a hospital X-ray machine.

Actually LED's are a special case (and they don't use a filament), when you excite an Atom, or a molecule you cause some electrons to be promoted to a higher electronic... err... orbital, and then when the electon "falls" back to it's ground state it releases the same amount of enegy that promoted it... but the electrong doesn't always fall straight to the ground state, but through intermediate states releasign smaller amounts as it goes.