Kablammers!
During my undergrad a classmate of mine said that he tried to convince his brother-in-law to start his Master's Thesis with that word. Sadly, he was unsuccessful.
I think it's interesting the kinds of things that will explode as well as the ways they will do so. It's important to note the difference between detonation and deflagration. As Destin from Smarter Every Day demonstrates, it is the difference between shotgun shells and gas cans. Both are considered explosions, but simply differ in the speed of the blast.
.jpg "Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters")
Most people with then think of explosives think of dynamite and TNT. The US military has also used Comp-B and still uses C-4 for it's purposes. In high school a group of my friends and I had a conversation with a member of the Army Core of Engineers (I later heard him speak on his experiences in Iraq as part of the 2nd wave of troops). As part of the conversation he described how to remove a freeway overpass using C-4. When he mentioned that he would set a 10 minute fuse, someone said, "Wow, it takes you that long to get away?" The engineer looked at him and said, "You don't want to have to run." This dispelled many of the images I had in my head from popular media of explosives experts sprinting away from their target and throwing themselves on the ground just in time. Granted, they still sell "Bomb Squad" shirts and don't forget Schlock Mercenary's Maxim 3. Needless to say, you don't want to have to run, but if you're working with explosives you should be prepared to.
Granted, chemical explosives are not the only option available. Destin pulled a first when he analyzed the Prince Rupert's Drop with a high speed camera. As he explains, when broken it explodes, but rather than releasing chemical potential energy it releases mechanical strain energy (4:42 mark). The speed of this explosion is approximately 1658 meters per second. Seeing that the speed of sound at sea level is 340.29 meters per second, it would mean that we have the equivalent of a detonation, but with glass. Make sure you wear eye protection.
Of course, glass isn't the only thing that might be seen as an unlikely explosive. As a youth, I helped several others clean at a grain mill. They explained that we could not use electrical appliances (like vacuums) because of the danger of explosion from the flour dust. One of the guys collected some and was planning on burning it in the parking lot later. I told him it wouldn't work, but that was only because my father had explained it to me. If you think about it, it makes sense. When something burns its heat radiates out around it. You don't have to touch the flame to feel the heat. If you have lots of little particles, like bits of flour dust, and they are in a cloud, evenly spaced where if you light one the ones around it will also ignite then depending on the size of the cloud you could have a pretty big fire ball. Kind of like this sawdust cannon or Mythbuster's creamer cannon that they built to test this principle. I think this would be classified as a deflagation.
But don't forget the some of the most powerful kinds of explosive. No, it's not nuclear - it's all natural. Volcanoes, meteors, even trees, can all go under the right conditions. I've even seen a dumpster spontaneously combust. I was walking by and heard a "FWOOM!" and where there was once a dumpster full of trash there was a dumpster full of fifteen foot tall flames. Nature has a way of surprising us with it's violence. One of particular violence was the Tunguska event in Russia. Scott Westerfeld, author of Leviathan, Behemoth, and Goliath, a trilogy of steam-punk alternate history novels, has fun with the event, but how it happened in his universe - you'll have to read the books to find out.
All in all, it's amazing what can go kablammers in this world. Even people. Spontaneous combustion aside, just try telling your significant other that those pants really do make them look fat.
During my undergrad a classmate of mine said that he tried to convince his brother-in-law to start his Master's Thesis with that word. Sadly, he was unsuccessful.
I think it's interesting the kinds of things that will explode as well as the ways they will do so. It's important to note the difference between detonation and deflagration. As Destin from Smarter Every Day demonstrates, it is the difference between shotgun shells and gas cans. Both are considered explosions, but simply differ in the speed of the blast.
Most people with then think of explosives think of dynamite and TNT. The US military has also used Comp-B and still uses C-4 for it's purposes. In high school a group of my friends and I had a conversation with a member of the Army Core of Engineers (I later heard him speak on his experiences in Iraq as part of the 2nd wave of troops). As part of the conversation he described how to remove a freeway overpass using C-4. When he mentioned that he would set a 10 minute fuse, someone said, "Wow, it takes you that long to get away?" The engineer looked at him and said, "You don't want to have to run." This dispelled many of the images I had in my head from popular media of explosives experts sprinting away from their target and throwing themselves on the ground just in time. Granted, they still sell "Bomb Squad" shirts and don't forget Schlock Mercenary's Maxim 3. Needless to say, you don't want to have to run, but if you're working with explosives you should be prepared to.Granted, chemical explosives are not the only option available. Destin pulled a first when he analyzed the Prince Rupert's Drop with a high speed camera. As he explains, when broken it explodes, but rather than releasing chemical potential energy it releases mechanical strain energy (4:42 mark). The speed of this explosion is approximately 1658 meters per second. Seeing that the speed of sound at sea level is 340.29 meters per second, it would mean that we have the equivalent of a detonation, but with glass. Make sure you wear eye protection.
Of course, glass isn't the only thing that might be seen as an unlikely explosive. As a youth, I helped several others clean at a grain mill. They explained that we could not use electrical appliances (like vacuums) because of the danger of explosion from the flour dust. One of the guys collected some and was planning on burning it in the parking lot later. I told him it wouldn't work, but that was only because my father had explained it to me. If you think about it, it makes sense. When something burns its heat radiates out around it. You don't have to touch the flame to feel the heat. If you have lots of little particles, like bits of flour dust, and they are in a cloud, evenly spaced where if you light one the ones around it will also ignite then depending on the size of the cloud you could have a pretty big fire ball. Kind of like this sawdust cannon or Mythbuster's creamer cannon that they built to test this principle. I think this would be classified as a deflagation.
But don't forget the some of the most powerful kinds of explosive. No, it's not nuclear - it's all natural. Volcanoes, meteors, even trees, can all go under the right conditions. I've even seen a dumpster spontaneously combust. I was walking by and heard a "FWOOM!" and where there was once a dumpster full of trash there was a dumpster full of fifteen foot tall flames. Nature has a way of surprising us with it's violence. One of particular violence was the Tunguska event in Russia. Scott Westerfeld, author of Leviathan, Behemoth, and Goliath, a trilogy of steam-punk alternate history novels, has fun with the event, but how it happened in his universe - you'll have to read the books to find out.
All in all, it's amazing what can go kablammers in this world. Even people. Spontaneous combustion aside, just try telling your significant other that those pants really do make them look fat.
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