PAPER Topics

Start of Term Paper
For centuries, humankind has looked at the stars, and for just as many years humankind has tried to explain the existence of those very same stars. Were they holes in an enormous canvas that covered the earth? Were they fire-flies that could ....

Middle of Term Paper
... understand the stars by understanding what fusion is, how it affects the life of a star, and what happens to a star when fusion can no longer occur. The first question one must ask is, "What is fusion?" One simple way of explaining it is taking two balls of clay and mashing them into one, creating a new, larger particle from the two. Now replace those balls of clay with sub-atomic particles, and when they meld, release an enormous amount of energy. This is fusion. There is currently three known variations of fusion: the proton-proton reaction (Figure 1.1), the carbon cycle (Figure 1.2), and the triple-alpha process (Figure 1.3). In the ...