• Question: whats the biggest explosion you ever had

    Asked by kday4 to Donna, Jo, Mark, Stuart, timcraggs on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Tim Craggs

      Tim Craggs answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I think the biggest explosion I ever had was when I did not put enough oil in my car and ended up blowing up the engine! (It was actually my Mum’s car – sorry Mum!)

      From a science perspective, I used to be taught by Peter Wothers, and he really liked blowing things up: here is a video of him setting light to some Nitrated cotton wool

      It is pretty cool!

    • Photo: Mark Lancaster

      Mark Lancaster answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Well the mini-explosions in the LHC are massive – two beams are smacking into each other and each has the energy (350 MJ) of an aircraft carrier. The magnets steering the beams also have 7 MJ of stored energy – when one went bang in Sep 2010 it produced a very loud noise ….

    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I don’t really work with chemicals that react to create explosions. However, a really cool way to make a big bang is to place some dry ice in an eppendorf (with a flip-top lid) and then leave the tube to come to room temperature – as the dry ice evaporates the air volume in the tube expands and BOOM the lid can blow off the tube!

      This is really cool, but can be dangerous due to fragments of plastic flying around.

    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Too many to mention, kday4! I’m a chemist!

      I was doing something in the fumehood once and ended up causing an explosion where lots of heavy, thck brown gas was given off. I pulled the front of the fumehood right down, looked a bit shifty, sounded the alarm and we had all to evacuate the lab.

      Oops. 🙂

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