The energy released by an explosion is the motor of the extension of its blast. For a time this energy is faced by the density of the violently displaced ambient medium. During this regime the edge moves according to Taylor's 2/5 scaling. However the explosion eventually departs from this trend. In this forth episode on the physics of explosions we show that this departure is due to the growing influence of the ambient pressure rather than density. Ultimately, this pressure combines with the energy to produce a final blast radius, beyond which the shock front becomes increasingly indistinguishable with a simple sound wave.
*Video Content*
On this page, you will find the pdf slides used in the making of the video, together with some films, gifs, images and plots used in the video. Feel free to use this content in any way you see fit.
A link to the datasets we used is available at the end of this page, together with the references associated with this video.
Slides
A4_SLIDES_compressed.pdfDownload our slideshow for your lectures / presentations.
Films
GIFs
Images
Plots
References
New:
Glasstone & Dolan (1977)
Project Gnome
Hopkinson (1915): British ordonance board minutes 13565. The National Archives, Kew, UK 11
Cranz (1926)
Fuller (2005)
Baker (1973)
Sachs (1944)
DOE/NV 209 REV15
Bainbridge (1976)
And from previous episodes:
Mack (1946)
Mack (1947)
Taylor (1950a)
Taylor (1950b)
O'Connell (1957)
Schmitt (2016)
Nguyen (2017)
Porzel (1957)
Kingerey (1962)
Aouad (2021)
Hargather (2007)
Kleine (2010)
Porneala (2006)
Campanella (2019)
Grun (1991)
Xiang (2017)
Trinity and Beyond
Greg Spriggs and the curation of nuclear atmospheric tests:
https://str.llnl.gov/october-2017/spriggs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWpqGKUG5yY&ab_channel=LawrenceLivermoreNationalLaboratory
LLNL Nuclear Test Films Browser: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/misc/llnlfilms/
More on Trinity:
Source of the Trinity footage and pictures: Los Alamos National Laboratory https://www.lanl.gov/ https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945 https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/julian-e-mack https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/high-speed-photography
More nuclear tests:
https://www.atomcentral.com/ https://www.sonicbomb.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbzthhT2eRcBpEPc5FPGtQ
Authors:
Marc-Antoine Fardin (Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, Université Paris Cité)
Mathieu Hautefeuille (Institut de Biologie Paris-Seine, Sorbonne Université)
Vivek Sharma (Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago)
Acknowledgements:
Anna Part (Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History)
Greg Spriggs (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)