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You Asked: How do party snaps work? — Boris, New York, N.Y. Marshall Brain Answers: The video shows you party snaps, also called snap-n-pops, in action: Here’s what happens if you snap one in your mouth: Of course, most kids immediately imagine making a bomb out of them, by unwrapping the paper and combining them [...]
This video demonstrates both the creation of, and the detonation of, nitroglycerin: If you would like more detail on the chemical reaction demonstrated in the video, a page like this one can help: How to Make Nitroglycerin Nitroglycerin is notoriously unstable. The ability to detonate it with a hammer demonstrates that instability. The thing that [...]
How Terrorist Bombs Work – Parcel bombs, truck bombs and suicide bombs
by Marshall Brain | November 2, 2010
Over the weekend we discovered that terrorist bombs were headed for the United States. Mailed from Yemen and disguised to look like ordinary packages, these bombs could have brought down their respective airplanes, or they could have exploded at their intended destinations. This is just the latest in a string of terrorist bombing attempts that [...]
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