• Question: how do you make a bomb

    Asked by shanekeogh123 to Colm, Eoin, Joseph, Lauren on 20 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Joseph Roche

      Joseph Roche answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      I think this is a question that you should maybe ask your teacher. Bombs are quite easy to make, but it would be very irresponsible of me to tell you how to make a bomb without telling you anything about safety. Scientists are very concerned with how to do things safely, so you should make sure that your teacher shows you how to do a nice controlled explosion in the classroom or lab. If your school does not have the facilities then you should study science in college and you will learn all about explosions.

    • Photo: Eoin O Colgain

      Eoin O Colgain answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      I can tell you how to make a hydrogen bomb, since the process is educational and the chances of you detonating one soon are remote 🙂 Ireland neither has nuclear power nor nuclear weapons.

      There are two types of nuclear reactions. One type fission breaks up larger nuclei into smaller nuclei and the other, fusion, as the name suggests, fuses nuclei together. Hydrogen bombs, work using both processes. An initial fission explosion is used to compress the fusion fuel so that a fusion reaction takes place.

      The largest bomb ever detonated was the tsar bomba in Russia (it had 3 explosions), which was 2000 times more powerful than earlier atomic bombs just based on fission explosions. One can read about it here.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

      Happy bomb making!

Comments