Why do nukes make a mushrooms cloud ?
In: Chemistry
Nukes create an enormous amount of heat. Most other bombs don’t create enough heat to “stick around” – they make a shockwave, they kick up a debris cloud. But much less heat, which just dissipates or blows away in the wind.
The mushroom cloud is not the shape of the nuclear explosion itself – which is a circular shockwave. The mushroom cloud forms later from the leftover heat, like smoke from a giant bonfire. The “stalk” is the hot air rising, compressed into a column by cooler air rushing in. The expanding “cap” is the smoke that reached its max altitude, where it hangs and expands outward. Put them together and you have that weird, foreboding mushroom shape.
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