• Question: what kind of chemical makes the grenade explade ?...

    Asked by chutneyoxo to Indi, Jarv, John, Ken, Vicky on 12 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Jarvist Moore Frost

      Jarvist Moore Frost answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Explosive ones!
      High explosives such as those used in munitions and mining are usually unstable molecules ring systems (often with nitrogen in them), that have a lot of energy bound up in strain of the molecule. However, they’re stuck in a locally stable state (a meta stable state), but when you really whack them, they fall apart and release lots of energy suddenly. This explosive shock wave actually goes through the explosive material faster than the speed of sound (often thousands of metres per second), causing all the molecules to fall apart as it reaches them. This releases a fast quantity of energy in a tiny amount of time, causing all the effects (the damage, the blast wave, the noise!) of explosives.

      In particular, an often used explosive by the military is TNT (Trinitrotoluene)

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