Talk:Iron peak

Helpful criticism

This article is impossible to understand. The title is Iron peak so the expectation is that the article begins witha clear definition of what 'iron peak' stands for. Yet the first sentence does not do that. If you know what Iron peak is, please, please improve the article.

Also, I don't think that the statement, "For iron, and for all of the heavier elements, nuclear fusion consumes energy" is true. Shouldn't it be "For elements heavier than iron..." because iron is the heaviest element that produces more energy than the fusion consumes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.77.225.199 (talk) 19:47, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why is there a peak?

Is the Iron peak indicative of a kind of conservation? Why would there be a local maximum here? The peaks could correlate with species that tend to be recycled. More info would be appreciated. Thanks.

Nickel to Zinc Reaction

The article mentions that adding four nucleons to Nickel-56 to get Zinc-60 would require energy. However if you look up the masses, even using a He4 nucleus instead of individual protons, you get 4.0026 + 55.942132 - 59.941827 = 0.002905. This eventually decays back to Nickel-60, which has a higher binding energy per nucleon than Zinc-60. I think there is some confusion over what the highest binding energy per nucleon means. If you had a huge pile of nucleons, this would tell you the lowest energy way to arrange them. But if you are looking at a reaction between two given species with a specific total number of nucleons involved, iron/nickel might not be involved in the lowest energy arrangement for that given number of nucleons. It still can release energy, especially if adding a very light nucleus to heavy one. Adding a proton with no binding energy to anything it will stick to releases some energy, by definition of binding energy. I am not sure how to word such a thing for the article though. AtomicDragon (talk) 16:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See my comments on the talk page for Silicon burning, about the same paragraph. In the context of silicon burning, it might be correct that creating zinc-60 consumes energy. The stars in that case basically are capable of reducing matter to a "pile of nucleons". In any case we need a source on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Morngnstar (talk • contribs) 11:27, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]