Hey, Vsauce. Michael here,
and today I'm in my apartment. But when I was in Kansas with family
my dad lit off what is known as a quarter stick. But don't worry, absolutely no children were around. Okay, look, the point is that today we're going to talk about explosives. Let's begin way down the scale with black powder, or smokeless powder which many modern rounds use. Now, usually smokeless powder doesn't even detonate. Instead, it deflagrates. Technically, an explosion is only a detonation when the material or the gases expelled travel faster than the speed of sound. If the explosion is subsonic,
you're only dealing with a deflagration. Now, we want a bullet's propellant
to deflagrate, not detonate, because we want it to have enough power
to move the bullet quickly, but not release its energy so fast
as to damage the gun or ourselves. Take a look at some smokeless powder
lit in the open and slow motion. It burns very strongly and quickly, but at all times, the gasses it expels
never exceed the speed of sound and no shock wave is produced. We're looking at deflegration here, not detonation. To compare, this is nitroglycerin. It's so fragile, you hit it with a hammer and it detonates. Even at a slower speed, we can see that all the material immediately explodes. Consumer fireworks use black powder, gun powder, and as such, they don't have enough power to really ever be set to detonate. The same goes for that quarter stick
you saw my dad light off. Those and M80s and cherry bombs are louder and often illegal, but they burn flash powder, not a high explosive light dynamite. But that doesn't mean fireworks can't be amazing. Currently, some of the largest
shells in use are 48 inches across. When exploded in the air, a 48 inch shell looks like this. Or like this. Oh yeah, when they fail to launch and burst on the ground instead, it looks like this. But let's move on to detonations—no matter what material releases the energy— whether it's a conventional explosive or a nuclear bomb or an asteroid impact or an earthquake, they are all commonly measured by saying how much TNT you would have to detonate to get an equivalently strong explosion. To give you a sense of scale,
here is the detonation of approximately 100 tons of TNT by a defense contractor disposing of explosives. Unlike deflegrations, detonations produce a shockwave, which is just that, a wave made of areas of high pressure and low pressure. This explosion was so powerful
the area of low pressure had such low pressure that water vapor in the air around it condensed momentarily, which formed this cloud. And here's a video of an explosion where the shock wave is particularly visible as it approaches and hits the camera man. You can also see shock condensation
clouds around these explosions set off by the United States in Hawaii in 1965. The US wanted to know nuclear attacks
would affect naval ships, so they detonated an equivalent amount of TNT on an island with US ships anchored nearby. This pile contains 500 tons of TNT waiting to explode. When it does, it looks like this. Earlier, the US tested actual nuclear weapons
to see how underwater detonations might affect our ships. This underwater nuclear explosion is much larger, the equivalent of not 100 tons of TNT, not 500 tons, but 8,000 tons. For comparison, the atomic bomb
dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 exploded with the energy of 15,000 tons of TNT. The single most physically powerful device
ever used by humanity was the Tsar Bomb. The Soviet Union tested it in 1961, far up north away from civilization. It was detonated two and a half miles
above the surface of the earth to minimize its destruction, which
was unprecedented by man. The Tsar Bomb exploded with the power equivalent to 50 million tons of TNT. The mushroom cloud from the Tsar Bomb extended beyond our normal atmosphere
into the mesosphere and dwarfed the largest clouds from US detonations. It was so large that comparatively the bombs dropped on Japan, well,
they're on the graph way down there. But at the end of the day,
nothing can beat supernovas, the explosion of an entire star. While 50 million tons may sound like a lot,
one supernova is estimated to give off the energy equivalent
of ten octillion million tons of TNT. I leave you with a cannon developed by
the US to shoot a normal little cannon ball, except that it carried a nuclear warhead. I'm pretty sure you can pick these up at
Bass Pro Shop, but regardless, be sure you're subscribed to Vsauce so you don't miss anything coming up, And as always, thanks for watching.
Haha I love that far fetched bridge.
"this atomic bomb has the power of fifty million kilo tnt... but that's nothing compared to a... super-nova"
My team once had to protect EOD while they disposed of 26,000 lbs of high explosives.
We had to break it up into two piles because to detonate it all in place had a lethal range beyond what the detonator was capable of.
The first one went off without a hitch. It was cool because you got to see the blast, watch the shock wave make its way to your vehicle, then "THUMP!" right in your chest. It was awesome.
What was not awesome was that the second pile failed to detonate. We determined it wasn't the radio detonator. The EOD guy hopped in my vehicle where I was chilling in the driver seat and my buddy was in the back ready to take the turret. We had to drive over to 13,000 lbs of explosives, and let this guy rig up a second device.
My buddy goes "Hey Doc, you brought your medic bag, right?"
I said "Dude, I don't think that's going to help. If the primary device goes off, we'll be vaporized before we know something went wrong"
Fun times.
They used Minecraft TNT to create that dome.
What is the kill radius of the tzar bomb?
For those that don't want to sign in
Ah, Vsauce. Never ceases to impress.
10 Octillion Million - sounds like something Ali G would come up with
I wonder whose job it was to put a detonator on that pile of kaboom. Give him the Balls of Steel award
This is like, the only thing I ever think about.