In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Options
a rifle is as powerful as an atomic bomb. sort of.
buschmaster
Member Posts: 14,229 ✭✭✭
I was reading about the first atomic bomb test. such a thing had never been done before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
and ya know it was funny because they didn't even know if it would really work... so what happens if... nothing happens! somebody has to walk up there and take a look. [:)]
anyways, the other concern was the Plutonium core itself. it cost a billion dollars.
if the bomb didn't work at all, they could disassemble it, recover the core, and use it again with some other design. but there was a distinct possibility that the bomb would just "fizzle". that is, sort-of explode. blowing up a billion dollars worth of Plutonium with nothing to show for it.
so what they decided to do was, put the bomb in a huge steel container. if it worked, the explosion should be around 20,000 tons of TNT, vaporizing the steel; if it just fizzled, the container must be strong enough to contain the blast so they could recover the Plutonium from inside and use it for the next test.
the engineers said what they needed was a sphere 13 to 15 feet in diameter, capable of containing 50,000 PSI and weighing 150 tons. but that was too difficult to make and too clumsy to transport. what they ended up using was a cylinder 10 feet in diameter, 25 feet long, walls 14" thick, weighing 214 tons. it was the heaviest object ever shipped by rail.
then when it got there, they said naah, never mind.
because they really didn't know what the A-bomb was going to do. if it produced an explosion of 500 tons of TNT, the steel container would still disintegrate, but get in the way of examining the effects- light, heat, blast, radiation, etc. if was only 100 tons of TNT, the observers would get blasted with shrapnel.
so to make use of it, they put it up on a tower 800 yards away from ground zero to see how it survived the blast. it did, the tower did not.
so, the interesting thing is, it was designed to contain an atomic fizzle of 50,000 PSI. most rifle cartridges are in the range of 50,000 to 65,000 PSI.
a small, teeny tiny atomic bomb, a fizzle, a dud- but an atomic bomb nevertheless. that's the power of a few grains of gunpowder in your cartridge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
and ya know it was funny because they didn't even know if it would really work... so what happens if... nothing happens! somebody has to walk up there and take a look. [:)]
anyways, the other concern was the Plutonium core itself. it cost a billion dollars.
if the bomb didn't work at all, they could disassemble it, recover the core, and use it again with some other design. but there was a distinct possibility that the bomb would just "fizzle". that is, sort-of explode. blowing up a billion dollars worth of Plutonium with nothing to show for it.
so what they decided to do was, put the bomb in a huge steel container. if it worked, the explosion should be around 20,000 tons of TNT, vaporizing the steel; if it just fizzled, the container must be strong enough to contain the blast so they could recover the Plutonium from inside and use it for the next test.
the engineers said what they needed was a sphere 13 to 15 feet in diameter, capable of containing 50,000 PSI and weighing 150 tons. but that was too difficult to make and too clumsy to transport. what they ended up using was a cylinder 10 feet in diameter, 25 feet long, walls 14" thick, weighing 214 tons. it was the heaviest object ever shipped by rail.
then when it got there, they said naah, never mind.
because they really didn't know what the A-bomb was going to do. if it produced an explosion of 500 tons of TNT, the steel container would still disintegrate, but get in the way of examining the effects- light, heat, blast, radiation, etc. if was only 100 tons of TNT, the observers would get blasted with shrapnel.
so to make use of it, they put it up on a tower 800 yards away from ground zero to see how it survived the blast. it did, the tower did not.
so, the interesting thing is, it was designed to contain an atomic fizzle of 50,000 PSI. most rifle cartridges are in the range of 50,000 to 65,000 PSI.
a small, teeny tiny atomic bomb, a fizzle, a dud- but an atomic bomb nevertheless. that's the power of a few grains of gunpowder in your cartridge.
Comments
I find it hard to believe that 5,300 (Five Thousand Three Hundred) Pounds of 'high explosive' produce < 50,000 PSI of pressure, since (if you root around on the net you might find) 200 lbs of high explosive produce a shock wave of 1 to 1 and a half MILLION PSI .
I forget the "official" name for it now, something like Black Mariah; but the box was larger than a portable classroom, and mostly lead. It was 15' behind a fence for years, until someone pointed a camera at it.