• Question: What is inside chemicals to cause an explosion

    Asked by issi2001 to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 26 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Some chemicals (not all of them) will cause an explosion when mixed together because the reaction that occurs between them is highly exothermic, i.e. it leads to the release of lots of heat. Usually there is some kind of chain reaction which means that the reaction of some chemicals causes the other chemicals in the pot/mixture to also react, which causes the reaction to get faster and faster and release lots of heat at the same time.

      Does this make sense?

    • Photo: Michael Cook

      Michael Cook answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I think I get it, Blanka! I didn’t know that.

      I do have a fun fact about a very famous explosive – dynamite. The inventor of it was Alfred Nobel, but he ended up feeling so bad about his invention (which was used to kill a lot of people) that he set up a fund to honour people making extraordinary contributions to science and humanities – the Nobel Prizes!

      As you can tell, when I don’t know the answer to something I resort to useless facts! I hope it was as interesting as explosions.

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