explosive

1. Relating to or having the nature of an explosion.
2. Tending to explode.

1. A substance, especially a prepared chemical, that explodes or causes explosion.
2. Linguistics. A plosive.

For more information on explosive, visit Britannica.com.

Definition: volatile, dangerous
Antonyms: calm, peaceful, safe

Any explosive chemical compound, mixture, or device, the primary or common purpose of which is to produce an explosion; i.e., with substantially instantaneous release of gas and heat, unless such compound, mixture, or device is otherwise specifically classified by the US Department of Transportation. Class A: possessing detonating hazard, such as dynamite or nitroglycerin. Class B: possessing flammable hazard, such as propellant explosives. Class C: containing class A or class B explosives, but in restricted quantities.

Explosives date back to the tenth century, when the Chinese used powder, a mixture of saltpeter (potassium nitrate) and sulfur, for fireworks and signals. Europeans began using powder only in the thirteenth century, when Roger Bacon added charcoal to the saltpeter and sulfur, creating "black powder." A century after Bacon, Berthold Schwarz invented a gun by filling an iron tube with black powder and a small pebble, then setting the powder on fire. Bacon's creation was the only known explosive for several hundred years.

Explosives are also used to produce the minerals used to make everything from televisions to paper clips to toothpaste to medicines. The mining and construction industries use "low explosives," which burn at slow rates and are designed to dislodge large pieces of rock and ore. Fireworks and signaling devices are other examples of low explosives. High explosives, which burn at a much faster rate, are used primarily for warfare and can be found in bombs, torpedoes, explosive shells, and missile warheads.

Early Americans used black powder mainly for hunting game. The first powder mill was erected in Massachusetts around 1675. The first recorded blasting took place in 1773.

By the early 1770s, the American colonists were readying for war, but they did not have nearly enough black powder with which to fight. The principal supply was left over from the French and Indian War, and it had to be supplemented with imports of half a million pounds of saltpeter and 1.5 million pounds of black powder. Less than 10 percent of the powder used by the revolutionary armies up to 1778 was produced in the colonies.

Du Pont and Other Nineteenth-Century Figures

This changed with the arrival in America of Eèleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours, who began working in a chemical lab in France at age sixteen. In 1802 he brought his expertise in manufacturing gunpowder to Delaware, building his own powder plant, Eleutherian Mills, on the Brandywine River. Two years later he was manufacturing and selling gunpowder. A year after that, his plant was exporting gunpowder to Spain. By 1811 du Pont was the largest manufacturer of gunpowder in America, producing over 200,000 pounds of powder with gross sales of $123,000.

By the early nineteenth century, Americans were no longer using powder strictly for their guns. Expanding frontiers required blasting to construct roads and canals. The discovery of coal in Virginia around 1830 increased the demand for explosives for mining.

Elsewhere in the world, refinements were being made in the process. In 1831, the Englishman William Bickford developed a "safety fuse" that really was not, since it was easily ignited, was unreliable, and sometimes caused fatalities. It was, however, the first efficient detonator, a device that goes off due to shock or heat to create a sufficient force to explode the main charge. Prior to Bickford's safety fuse, mercury fulminate served as the primary detonating compound.

In the late 1840s the Italian scientist Ascanio Sobrero mixed nitric acid and glycerin to come up with nitroglycerin, a highly unstable yet powerful explosive. Alfred Nobel and his father built a small factory in Sweden in 1861 to expand on Sobrero's experiments. In 1866 Nobel combined kieselguhr, the fossilized remains of sea animals, with nitroglycerin to create dynamite, which was significantly more stable than nitroglycerin alone. It was also much faster to ignite, making it one of the first high explosives.

In America, du Pont's grandson Lammot du Pont helped secure his family's place as the predominant manufacturer of explosives when he used the cheaper sodium nitrate instead of potassium nitrate in his powder. During the Civil War he built a plant in New Jersey and produced dynamite, which was three times more powerful than black powder.

Modern Explosives and Their Uses

From the end of the Civil War in 1865 through the end of World War II in 1945, dynamite served as the country's chief engineering tool, allowing mines to be dug deeper and more quickly; quarrying material such as limestone, cement, and concrete; deepening and widening harbors; paving the way for roads and railways; and constructing dams to store water and produce electricity. Dynamite was also instrumental in oil and gas exploration.

The DuPont Company manufactured much of this dynamite until 1911, when a U.S. circuit court found the company to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. DuPont still accounted for half the nation's total explosives for mining and heavy construction, providing U.S. industry with 840 million pounds of dynamite and blasting powder. During World War I, DuPont supplied 1.5 billion pounds of military explosives to the Allied forces.

In addition to dynamite, trinitrotoluene (TNT) was used extensively in the war effort. Amatol, a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate, was used as well, and between the world wars, ammonium nitrate became one of the most important ingredients used in explosives. In the 1940s it became available in an inexpensive form for mixing with fuel oil. This mixture was commonly called ANFO (ammonium nitrate-fuel oil mixtures).

By the 1970s at least 70 percent of high explosives used in the United States contained ammonium nitrate either mixed with fuel oil or in a water gel. These blasting agents are much safer than traditional agents; they produce little or no flame and explode at low temperatures, avoiding potential secondary explosions of mine gases and dust. With its low cost and relative safety, ANFO has helped revolutionize open-pit and underground mining.

Atomic and Nuclear Explosives

In 1945 a test explosion code-named Trinity ushered in the nuclear age of weaponry with the world's first atomic explosion. A plutonium sphere about the size of an orange, produced by 51,000 workers over twenty-seven months, fueled the test. The blast, equivalent to 18,600 tons of TNT, released heat four times that of the sun's interior and was seen 250 miles away.

Three weeks after the test, on 6 August 1945, the United States dropped "Little Boy," with a force of 16,000 tons of TNT, on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later "Fat Man," equivalent to 22,000 tons of TNT, was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, signaling the end of World War II in the Pacific theater.

The United States spent $350 billion building 70,000 nuclear warheads through the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Atmospheric tests had released radioactive fallout equal to 40,000 times the Hiroshima bomb. Experiments were conducted in the 1960s to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives but met with little (or no) success.

Bibliography

Brown, G. I. The Big Bang: A History of Explosives. Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton, 1998.

"The Commercial Explosives Industry." The Institute of Makers of Explosives. Available at http://www.ime.org/commercialindustry.htm.

"200 Years of History." E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. Available at http://www.dupont.com/corp/overview/history.

—T. L. Livermore

Substance used for causing explosions. They may be accessible to animals and cause poisoning.

• plastic e. poisoning — see cyclonite. Called also PE4.

Dansk (Danish)
adj. - eksplosiv, sprængfarlig
n. - sprængstof, lukkelyd

Nederlands (Dutch)
explosief, springstof, ontplofbaar

Français (French)
adj. - explosif, explosible, détonant, (Phon) explosif
n. - (Phon) consonne explosive, (Chim, gén) explosif

Deutsch (German)
n. - Sprengstoff
adj. - explosiv

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - εκρηκτικό, εκρηκτική ύλη
adj. - εκρηκτικός

Italiano (Italian)
esplosivo

Português (Portuguese)
n., -
adj. - explosivo (m)

Русский (Russian)
взрывчатое вещество, взрывчатый

Español (Spanish)
adj. - explosivo
n. - explosivo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - sprängämne
adj. - explosiv, häftig

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
易爆发的, 暴躁的, 爆炸的, 炸药, 爆炸物

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 易爆發的, 暴躁的, 爆炸的
n. - 炸藥, 爆炸物

한국어 (Korean)
adj. - 폭발의, 폭발적인
n. - 폭발물, 파열음

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 爆発の, 爆発性の, 激しやすい, 議論の紛糾する, 一触即発の
n. - 爆発物, 爆薬, 火薬

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) مادة متفجرة (صفه) انفجاري‏

עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - ‮עלול להתפוצץ, מתפרץ‬
n. - ‮חומר נפץ‬

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