- #1
Incand
- 334
- 47
I'm having trouble understand a passage in our book.
The author claims that the reaction
##^2H+^2H \to ^4He + \gamma##
is unlikely since the ##Q## value is large (##23.8## MeV) which happens to be greater than both the neutron and proton separation energies.
This seem very counter intuitive to me. Shouldn't a large ##Q## value rather make the reaction more probably?
We also have the D-T reaction
##^2H+^3H \to ^4He +n## with ##Q=17.6##
that for some reason is more probable but I really don't see the difference.
The author claims that the reaction
##^2H+^2H \to ^4He + \gamma##
is unlikely since the ##Q## value is large (##23.8## MeV) which happens to be greater than both the neutron and proton separation energies.
This seem very counter intuitive to me. Shouldn't a large ##Q## value rather make the reaction more probably?
We also have the D-T reaction
##^2H+^3H \to ^4He +n## with ##Q=17.6##
that for some reason is more probable but I really don't see the difference.