im sure everyone has seen sticks on dynamite in movies and history documentaries. they even used it in myth-busters a few times i think, but how much force would it really take to set it off?
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Dynamite is (by design) *way* more stable than nitroglycerin, even though nitroglycerin is the underlying explosive it uses. It’s stable enough to still see some use, although it certainly requires some caution.
Nitroglycerin, on the other hand, is *very very very* unstable stuff. Nitroglycerin can be set off by gently tapping it – in more technical language, it’s a contact explosive. [This video isn’t of nitroglycerin, but it should give you something of an idea of what we’re talking about here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Detonating_Nitrogen_triiodide.webm) (the explosion in this video is 15 grams of material, roughly a grape-sized chunk). Notice how in the very slo-mo version played late in the video, the explosion has covered a big chunk of the room *before the sound of it can even reach the camera* – in other words, the blast is far faster than the speed of sound.
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