If you can fix my hot tea maker, which seems to have died, I would pay you $50.00.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nu...
"...Nuclear fusion sequence and silicon photodisintegration[edit]
After a star completes the oxygen burning process, its core is composed primarily of silicon and sulfur.[2][3] If it has sufficiently high mass, it further contracts until its core reaches temperatures in the range of 2.7–3.5 GK (230–300 keV). At these temperatures, silicon and other elements can photodisintegrate, emitting a proton or an alpha particle.[2] Silicon burning proceeds by photodisintegration rearrangement,[4] which creates new elements by adding one of these freed alpha particles[2] (the equivalent of a helium nucleus) per capture step in the following sequence (photoejection of alphas not shown):
28
14Si
+ 4
2He
→ 32
16S
32
16S
+ 4
2He
→ 36
18Ar
36
18Ar
+ 4
2He
→ 40
20Ca
40
20Ca
+ 4
2He
→ 44
22Ti
44
22Ti
+ 4
2He
→ 48
24Cr
48
24Cr
+ 4
2He
→ 52
26Fe
52
26Fe
+ 4
2He
→ 56
28Ni
56
28Ni
+ 4
2He
→ 60
30Zn
[nb 1]
The silicon-burning sequence lasts about one day before being struck by the shock wave that was launched by the core collapse. Burning then becomes much more rapid at the elevated temperature and stops only when the rearrangement chain has been converted to nickel-56 or is stopped by supernova ejection and cooling. The star can no longer release energy via nuclear fusion because a nucleus with 56 nucleons has the lowest mass per nucleon of all the elements in the alpha process sequence. Only minutes are available for the nickel-56 to decay within the core of a massive star, and only seconds if in the ejecta. The star has run out of nuclear fuel and within minutes its core begins to contract.