Portal:Physics/Selected picture/Week 5, 2007

Image credit: User:Fastfission

The Teller–Ulam design is a nuclear weapon design which is used in megaton-range thermonuclear weapons, and is more colloquially referred to as "the secret of the hydrogen bomb". This diagram depicts the basics of the Teller–Ulam configuration: a fission bomb uses radiation (from the bottom section) to compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel (the top section).