Tenney Davis L. The Chemistry of Power and Explosives. Volume I

New York: J. Willey and Sons, 1941. — 216 p.It seems unnecessary to define an explosion, for everyone knows what it is — a loud noise and the sudden going away of things from the place where they have been. Sometimes it may only be the air in the neighborhood of the material or the gas from the explosion which goes away. Our simple definition makes ention of the one single attribute which all explosives possess. It will be necessary to add other ideas to it if we wish to describe the explosive properties of any particular substance. For example, it is not proper to define an explosive as a substance, or a mixture of substances, which is capable of undergoing a sudden transformation with the production of heat and gas. The production of heat alone by the inherent energy of the substance which produces it will be enough to constitute the substance an explosive. Cuprous acetylide explodes by decomposing into cop- per and carbon and heat, no gas whatever, but the sudden heat causes a sudden expansion of the air in the neighbor-hood, and the result is an unequivocal explosion. All explosive substances produce heat; nearly all of them produce gas. The change is invariably accompanied by the liberation of energy. The products of the explosion represent a lower energy level than did the ex- plosive before it had produced the explosion. Explosives com- monly require some stimulus, like a blow or a spark, to provoke them to liberate their energy, that is, to undergo the change which produces the explosion, but the stimulus which "sets off" the explosive does not contribute to the energy of the explosion. The various stimuli to which explosives respond and the manners of their responses in producing explosions provide a convenient
basis for the classification of these interesting materials.