system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why do such small amounts of matter have such huge amounts of energy contained in them?

For example, the 'little boy' boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima converted under a gram of matter into a city leveling blast. Are all materials equal in energy output or do some release more energy than others?
gpt
It's actually even less mass doing the work than you think.

This is part of E=mc^2  which defines mass and energy as equivalent. Basically, in the large nuclei that fissile material in bombs have, there is a certain amount of mass that is converted to Energy to bind the nucleus together. Different atoms have different binding energies, so when the nuclear reaction takes place and the atom is split into two smaller atoms the excess mass is converted to energy.

If all of the mass of the material were converted, the blast would be considerably bigger.