What is the strongest explosive?

HMX is the most powerful high explosive produced in industrial quantities today. It is a relatively insensitive, temperature-stable and safe-to-handle high explosive that makes it useful in a variety of applications both in military and civilian end products.

What is the most powerful type of explosive?

Nitroglycerine, discovered in 1846, still remains the most powerful explosive in practical use. Many useful advances have been and are being made, but new explosives are merely new mixtures of old materials, given fancy names.

Which is more powerful TNT or RDX?

As an explosive, RDX is one and a half times more powerful than TNT and is easily initiated with mercury fulminate (Lewis 2007).

What is the fastest explosive?

Octanitrocubane has a detonation velocity of 10,100 m/s, making it the fastest known explosive.

Is TNT or dynamite more powerful?

It's the small explosion of the blasting cap that is required to cause the nitroglycerin to explode. You may see some explosives labeled “TNT" that look like dynamite. TNT stands for trinitrotoluene, which is also an explosive but quite different from dynamite. Dynamite is actually much more powerful than TNT.

The Difference Between High Explosives and Low Explosives

What is more explosive than TNT?

One of the most powerful explosive chemicals known to us is PETN, which contains nitro groups which are similar to that in TNT and the nitroglycerin in dynamite. But the presence of more of these nitro groups means it explodes with more power.

How powerful is C4 compared to TNT?

C4 explosives have more complete destructive power compared to TNT and the number of effective explosives required to destroy the concrete with the strength of fc = 229.31 kg / cm2 is 122 g.

How powerful is HMX?

HMX consists of opaque/transparent crystals with typical crystal sizes ranging from less than 10 microns to more than 1000 microns. Its melting point is 280 °C with a crystal density as high as 1.9 g/cm³. At maximum density its detonation velocity is 9100 m/s with a detonation pressure above 39 GPa.

Is cubane real?

Cubane (C₈H₈) is a synthetic hydrocarbon molecule that consists of eight carbon atoms arranged at the corners of a cube, with one hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom. A solid crystalline substance, cubane is one of the Platonic hydrocarbons and a member of the prismanes.

How explosive is HMX?

HMX does not occur naturally. It is a man-made chemical made from other chemicals. HMX explodes at high temperatures of 534 degrees and above. For this reason, HMX is used only by the military in certain applications.

What is a C-4 bomb?

Composition C4 is a plastic explosive substance used in military combat units for demolition. The active component of composition C4 is hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine, also known as RDX (Royal Demolition Explosive).

Is Semtex a C4?

Semtex is a very powerful explosive device, similar to C4. It was developed in Czechoslovakia. Because of its similarities, it was nicknamed the "Terrorist's C4" during the Cold War. The explosive is made with mainly RDX and PETN, in addition with numerous binders and stabilizers.

Is RDX a explosive?

The chemical name for RDX is 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine. It is a white powder and is very explosive. RDX is used as an explosive and is also used in combination with other ingredients in explosives.

What is Emulex explosive?

Emulex is explosive material that is a sensitive emulsion explosive with a greyish-yellow paste like texture wrapped in plastic film or rigid paper tube cartridges. It is used in rock blasting in quarry.

How much TNT is in a grenade?

Offensive hand grenades provide blast effects. They are of cylindrical shape and are loaded with approximately one-half pound of flaked TNT.

What is the blast radius of a 50 megaton bomb?

(To put it into perspective: The fireball for a 50-megaton weapon has a radius of about 3 miles.

What was the biggest explosion ever?

#1: Tsar Bomba (1961)

The explosion, yielding 50,000 kilotons, obliterated an abandoned village 34 miles (55km) away and generated a 5.0-5.25 magnitude earthquake in the surrounding region.

How explosive is trinitrotoluene?

TNT has a detonation velocity of 6,940 m/s compared to 1,680 m/s for the detonation of pentane in air, and the 0.34 m/s stoichiometric flame speed of gasoline combustion in air.

How explosive is fulminated mercury?

When thrown with human force, the 50-gram piece of fulminated mercury they tested failed to explode; though it exploded once fitted with a blasting cap, it did not produce an explosion sufficient to blow out windows as seen on the show.

Is Nitro a TNT?

But TNT (or 2,4,6,-trinitrotoluene, to use its chemical name) is not one of those components. Instead, the active explosive in dynamite is a chemical called nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin was first made in 1847 by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero -- not by Alfred Nobel.

What does TNT smell like?

Other objects and even some medical conditions are also associated with distinctive odors. For example, the nitroglycerin fumes in dynamite can smell like banana, while food infected with salmonella bacteria can release hydrogen sulfide gas that smells like rotten eggs.

Can dynamite explode when wet?

Even though the diatomaceous earth takes away some of the dangers of nitroglycerin, there are still problems because the mixture is not stable in damp environments. Water causes the nitroglycerin to leak away. The nitroglycerin can build up, and explode unexpectedly.