K.I.L.E.R said:
someElement >= Iron = absorbs energy under fusion at normal star energy dispertion.
Supernovae fixes this by overheating past what a normal star can do, iron becomes fused and process is restarted over and over again until a heavier element is formed and the current level of energy is inadequate to fuse the element.
Okay, not quite. Iron is the end-point of nuclear fusion. Iron is the most stable element, and normal fusion will no longer occur to produce heavier elements.
The trigger of a supernova explosion is that the nuclear fusion turns off. It may sound a bit strange, but the thing that is keeping any star from catastrophic heating is its nuclear reaction. The basic idea is this: normally stars are supported by their temperature. Once their nuclear reaction turns off, their temperature drops a bit, and they collapse. But the equations work out so that the net temperature change with this collapse is positive, because as the star collapses it needs to support more density, which requires higher temperatures.
So, once the nuclear reaction of a star has given out, it will start to heat up. As it heats up, it will release energy faster and faster, and thus collapse faster and faster. This is a supernova explosion, the end result of which depends upon the mass of the star.
Low-mass stars become supported by electron degeneracy pressure. This is basically your good old Pauli exclusion principle at work: since electrons are fermions, no two electrons can occupy the same state at the same time. This pressure will prevent lower-mass stars from collapsing beyond a certain point, and since their nuclear fuel is spend, they become a hot little ball that just radiates the last of its energy over a rather long period of time. These are white dwarfs.
Larger stars become supported by neutron degeneracy pressure. This is what happens to a star when the electron degeneracy pressure isn't enough to keep the star from total collapse. The electrons are basically pushed into the protons, leaving only neutrons (though the final state of such a star may be more complex than just a big ball of neutrons). Like white dwarfs, neutron stars start off as very hot, and eventually cool off.
Also like white dwarfs, there is a maximum mass allowed by neutron degeneracy pressure. If the mass of the remaining core of a star is larger than this limit, the final state is a black hole: with no amount of pressure being able to sustain the object, it just collapses to nothingness or near-nothingness. These explosions are significantly more massive than the above explosions, and are believed to be the cause of one of the two classes of gamma ray bursts.
Edit: By the way, elements heavier than iron are believed to be formed during supernova explosions, as the extreme high temperatures and pressures will randomly create some of these elements in trace amounts.
