Nitroglycerin .
Nitroglycerin is so sensitive that if it's dropped, shaken, or even just bumped, it can detonate.
- Nitroglycerin is incredibly powerful and it gets this power from its molecular structure.
- Nitroglycerin sped up industrial excavation.
nitroglycerin the cordite of Bravery the story made sense of the senseless
Because nitroglycerin is so viscous, tiny bubbles of air and water vapor easily get trapped inside.
But nitroglycerin doesn't just have one of these bubbles.
of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose.
When the nitroglycerin goes off, it's gonna be like someone shooting a 50 cal.
Sticking with nitroglycerin .
I will make nitroglycerin safe."
That's because nitroglycerin is a lot like the liquid in this beer bottle.
It will make the nitroglycerin less sensitive.
Because people knew that nitroglycerin had this connotation of being deadly.
manufacturer of nitroglycerin the time the most explosive most powerful force in the planet millions of people died
These nitro groups are what makes nitroglycerin so unstable.
- What we see in our experiments with nitroglycerin is all these things happen really fast.
- But what's crazy about nitroglycerin is that a regular flame won't cause it to ignite.
Alfred took a container of nitroglycerin and inserted a wooden plug and packed it with gunpowder.
The city of Stockholm declared nitroglycerin too dangerous and banned its production within city limits.
What that helps do is separate the nitroglycerin molecules from each other.
and the invading water molecules then encounter nitroglycerin , which gets pushed outwards.
So he began experimenting with a new nitroglycerin nitrocellulose mixture.
And it's like when people take nitroglycerin for angina, a crushing chest pain.
And I taught her how to make nitroglycerin .
We've loaded 15 grams of gunpowder and 15 grams of nitroglycerin into test tubes, and then set them in clay blocks so we can compare their destructive power.
See, nitroglycerin is a highly unstable molecule.
So then these go on to hit other nitroglycerin molecules, which causes their bonds to break.
But the specific kind of explosion we're interested in with nitroglycerin is a detonation.
He was searching for a reliable way to detonate nitroglycerin , dreaming it could one day power his father's sea mines.
So the same hammer impact that you would try with straight nitroglycerin would take more force, because that absorbent material will take some of
And that leaves empty pores ready to absorb nitroglycerin .
And because the fuel was a combination of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, both of which broke down into clear, stable gases, it burned with little smoke.
- And that's what nitroglycerin does.
So a molecule of nitroglycerin will decompose 3 trillion times faster than the blink of an eye.
See, while a fuse can heat nitroglycerin , which makes its molecules vibrate faster, and it might even break a few no bonds,
And it was that sudden impact that delivered the shock needed to detonate the nitroglycerin .
To meet the sudden demand, Alfred began producing nitroglycerin in Sweden, enlisting the help of his younger brother, Emil.
Now, you might think to make nitroglycerin safe, Alfred just has to get rid of those bubbles, right?
Now, a similar thing can happen in nitroglycerin .
And if we drop it in the exact same way that set off the nitroglycerin .
- The biggest explosion we've seen up to now is 100 grams of nitroglycerin .
So when Alfred created dynamite, nitroglycerin still had a terrible reputation.
Investigators traced the cause to dynamite that had been sweating beads of nitroglycerin .
But what Alfred was interested in was what happened when you combined it with nitroglycerin ?
- And now when you mix them, the smaller nitroglycerin molecules slip between these long nitrocellulose chains, trapping the nitroglycerin molecules and keeping them apart.
And in fact, if you take nitroglycerin and you drop it, it will explode.
So Alfred's baby brother Emil was trying to synthesize a stable version of nitroglycerin .
It was actually made of completely edible ingredients, nitroglycerin , which Alfred himself would take for angina, and things like chalk, and antacids, and things like that.
other In other words, the nitroglycerin would not seep out because otherwise, it would become really unstable and it could explode