And in the world of science, speculation about who will win has kicked into high gear. Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel made his fortune because he invented dynamite. When he died, he left most of that fortune to establish the prizes that bear his name.
So in honor of Nobel Prize week, here are three things you might not know about this infamous explosive. But in fact, while TNT and dynamite are both explosives, they are different things. Dynamite is indeed an explosive with several components assembled together.
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. The trouble was, nitroglycerin was highly unstable.
It caused grisly explosions, including one in San Francisco that leveled a building and killed 15 people. Nobel's big invention -- dynamite -- was a way of stabilizing nitroglycerin to make it more practical for blasting rocks or for tunneling into mines.
His aha moment came during a stay in Germany:. He realized that nitroglycerine had to be absorbed by some kind of porous material, forming a mixture that would be easier to handle. On the German moorlands very close to where he was staying, he found a type of porous, absorbent sand or diatomaceous earth known in German as Kieselguhr. When nitroglycerine was absorbed by Kieselguhr, it formed a paste that was easy to knead and shape.
This paste could be shaped into rods that were easily inserted into drilling holes. It could also be transported and subjected to jolts without triggering explosions. It could even be ignited without anything happening. He called it dynamite after the Greek word for power, dynamis. TNT, in contrast to nitroglycerin, is very difficult to detonate. So, in short: Don't say "TNT" when you mean "dynamite.
Nitroglycerin and TNT 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene are two different chemicals. Did you know that 42 different minerals are used to make a telephone and 35 are used to make a color television. Even everyday products such as talcum powder, toothpaste, cosmetics and medicines contain minerals, all of which must be mined using explosives.
We have prepared a brochure presenting some of the things made possible with industrial explosives. The explosives industry was founded in this country during its very beginnings, when black powder was used to mine for minerals, break rock, clear fields and make roads.
It is not an overstatement to say that this nation was built with the help of explosives. In the s, Alfred Nobel, a Swede, invented dynamite and the blasting cap required to make it explode. Their models could help researchers develop and test But a new study finds that water bears propel themselves through sediment and soil on eight stubby legs, in The researchers measured the spontaneous emission of fast Now they're building the hardware for Hidden Behavior of Supercapacitor Materials Nov.
Now this It consists, in principle, only of sand, gravel, Minimizing the measurement effects preserves coherence across engine cycles and improves the power output and Print Email Share.
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