fireworks disaster

[--Pete]

Hi,

The dynamite of today is far more powerful than the dynamite made by Mr. Nobel in his day.

Better binder, same old nitro. About the same bang per stick. The real improvement is that modern dynamite doesn't sweat, making it somewhat safer to use and a lot safer to store. Of course, the fact that nobody is making dynamite anymore (AFAIK) makes it still safer;)

Overall, Explosives have become far more condensed and, coincidently, more powerful for the same physical weight . . .

Yes and no. Black powder, nitro (and thus dynamite), TNT (trinitrotoluene), gun cotton, and a few other explosives that date back to the 1800's and earlier have really not changed much. With the exception of black powder (a mixture) they are all componds, thus the specific energy per molecule is constant for each type. In bulk, the specific energy is determied by the purity, but all these compounds are easy to purify and early on they got to .99 or better, so there was little room for improvement.

Advances in explosives in the twentieth century was mostly in stability, followed somewhat by specific energy. And, of course, the ammonium nitrate/fuel oil mixture so dearly loved by commercial users has cheapness (and relative safety) as its main drawing card.

Finally, if the explosion that is the topic of this thread was really of a fireworks factory, then pretty much the main explosive would have been either black powder or flash powder. Neither of these has changed much in over a century.

For more on explosives, see this which looked relatively correct and complete on a quick scan.

--Pete