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View Full Version : H2O in the air making explosives more dangerous


phyrelord
September 16th, 2001, 11:21 PM
I was thinking which in itself is scary, and i came up with the idea that air can compress because it's a gas, however water cannot because liquids have an indefinate shape but a specific volume. So my idea was to make a tube filled with water, place a charge at the bottom which will launch the water into the air in a fine spray. The water then pushes the air out of the room and a second charge is set off multiplying the force because the water doesn't compress any. just a thought it would have to be done on a massive scale in order to work though.

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mongo blongo
September 17th, 2001, 12:52 AM
I think i know what you are trying to get at but the amount of air pushed out of the room will be equal to the volume of gas produced by the charge. The only effect the water have would be decreasing the amount of air in the room to begin with but no difference to the amount pushed out of the room.
(I think)
Water can't be compressed because the molecules are too close together unlike a gas.

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Jhonbus
September 17th, 2001, 02:56 PM
Mongo Blongo is correct. There may be a small (tiny) effect because the water will increase the overall density of the contents of the room, meaning transmission of energy will be more efficient, but it would have no discernible effect.

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Anthony
September 17th, 2001, 05:41 PM
"Water can't be compressed because the molecules are too close together"

The molecules in solids are even closer together, so why are solids compressible and not liquids?

Or do you just remove/compress air/gases trapped in the solid?

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Jhonbus
September 18th, 2001, 10:32 PM
Both solids and liquids can actually be compressed, but only a *tiny* fraction of the amount by which a gas can be compressed.

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A physicist can make a bigger explosion than a chemist ever did
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oryp69
July 4th, 2002, 08:15 PM
I think it is possible to compress solids, because the way a nuclear weapon works, is that the plutonium core is compressed into a critical mass causing a chain reaction or something, so it must be possible to compress solids to some degree.

Edit: Never abbreviate "some" to "sum" again. Spelling like that really lowers the tone of this place...

<small>[ July 12, 2002, 07:44 PM: Message edited by: Mr Cool ]</small>

cutefix
July 6th, 2002, 06:12 AM
Plutonium is a world apart from ordinary H2O.The former has the potential because of its uniqueness in becoming critical if the conditions are appropriate.Eventhough, the conditions needed to attain that reactive state is rather complicated and an extremely precise operation.
Meanwhile compression of liquids are only practical in hydraulic application...
On the other hand your idea of dispersing the liquid and ignited by another initiator was indeed used in Fuel air explosives(FAE),but they used reactive flammable liquids ,like propylene oxide,methylacetylene,ethylene oxide ,etc.

<small>[ July 06, 2002, 05:17 AM: Message edited by: cutefix ]</small>

nbk2000
July 6th, 2002, 10:51 AM
Explosive implosion can compress solid steel to 10x or more normal density. But this is only maintained for a couple of milliseconds before it blows apart the molten metal core. With fissionable materials, this isn't a problem since it'll have 'nuked' long before that happens.

Water is compressible by only a miniscule percentage. Something like 0.000001% or something like that.

Perhaps if you could generate enough heat to instantly turn the water fog into steam, then you could get a boost. Steam is something like several hundred times larger in volume than liquid water for the same weight.

VX
July 6th, 2002, 05:23 PM
gaboryp69 Nuclear fusion has nothing to do with the fact that the plutonium is compressed. The critical mass is the minimum mass (If the metal is in a sphere i.e. smallest surface area) where enough slow neutrons released from one decaying nucleus will stay within the metal and go on to form further fission. In a chain reaction each nucleus that decays must cause more than one other nucleus to decay. If the mass is below the critical mass then too many neutrons are lost through the relatively large surface area to sustain a chain reaction. This is why a small piece of plutonium doesn’t ‘blow up’.

Harry
July 9th, 2002, 03:03 PM
That's FISSION, not fusion! And compression of a subcritical mass of plutonium causes the chain reaction by placing the nuclei in closer proximity to each other, thus presenting easier targets for neutrons released by the spontaneous decay of nuclei. Thus, a fission nuke using a subcritical mass of plutonium is actually more efficient, and cleaner, than either Fat Man or Little Boy, which used critical masses and weighed "very much", but gave fairly low yield for the weight. Fusion is a different matter, a lot more difficult, but a lot more fun.

Harry Mann

Polverone
July 12th, 2002, 04:26 PM
As long as you're sticking your tongue out you should have noted that a plutonium implosion weapon does *not* rely on "neutrons released by the spontaneous decay of nuclei." It has a source of neutrons to give the core a good burst of neutron irradiation and get things going. Old nuclear weapons used a mixture of polonium and beryllium to produce the neutrons; more modern weapons use a pulse neutron tube, essentially a very compact, one-shot particle accelerator that can supply a high flux of neutrons at the time of implosion.

pyromaniac_guy
July 12th, 2002, 07:45 PM
both solids and liquids (including water) CAN be compressed, but it takes alot of effort to do so....
and iron can NOT be compressed to 10x solid density, not with current technology at least. the compression of a dense solid to a few times it's non compressed density is quiter difficult a feat. The more you compress a solid, the more difficult it becomes to further compress the material, as an example, to compress uranium to 2x solid density requires 6 times the unraniums weight in tnt, assuming a fairly efficent improlsion device. For 3x solid density 56 times the weight of urnaium is needed. for 4x solid density 480 times the weight of uranium is needed.

Also, harry, you are wron in saying that fission devices they compress plutonium are more efficent that the fat man device was, as it WAS a fsiion device that copressed plutonium. The unreflected criticle mass of plutonium is over 10 kg, fatman used only 6.2 kg of plutonium. granted a reflector would ahve brought down the critticle mass, but you dont get a 20kt yeild by having just having a barely critticle mass, in fat man compression ont he order of close to 2x solid density was acheived

<small>[ July 12, 2002, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: pyromaniac_guy ]</small>