What is the significance of gunpowder?

Answer 1

Gnpowder was the first substance capable of the fast release of chemical energy in a small, portable package. This meant that people no longer were limited to the strength of a man or an animal to apply force. That force might be to propel a cannonball to knock down a wall, or to break rocks in a mine or for a mountain road.

Gunpowder changed the way people fought in the war. Instead of human powered weapons such as bows, or kinetic energy weapons such as catapults, gunpowder provided relatively compact weapons for battle at a distance. Eventually it made contemporary forms of armor ineffective, as well as severely reducing the defensive capabilities of stone-walled castles.