I was watching the videos of the Beirut incident ,and was wondering why the shockwave is so impactful.
In: Physics
When you detonate a high explosive, it’s actually a chemical reaction that multiplies the volume of the explosive material. So if you have like a gallon of explosive, it can almost instantaneously become 20 gallons of a gas (these are just made up numbers to illustrate the point of volume expansion)
All of that new volume of gas created displaces a lot of air. So it’s basically pushing the air in every direction making space for the new gas. This creates the shockwave, which can be moving at 2000mph. This blast of air is moving at a speed like 6-7 times faster than the air in an F5 tornado. Very destructive
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