what is Dianamite? ...
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Answer:
Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay) and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany and patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more powerful alternative to black powder.
SOME OTHER THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT DYNAMITE:–
1. Dynamite is not the same thing as TNT.
You’ve probably heard people say “TNT” and “dynamite” in a conversation as though they were the same thing. But in fact, while TNT and dynamite are both explosives, they are different things.If you figured TNT was the name of the chemical inside dynamite, and dynamite was the assembled explosive, you’d only be half right. Dynamite is indeed an explosive with several components assembled together. But TNT (or 2,4,6,-trinitrotoluene, to use its chemical name) is not one of those components. Instead, the active explosive in dynamite is a chemical called nitroglycerin.
Nitroglycerin was first made in 1847 by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero — not by Alfred Nobel. The find caused a sensation because nitroglycerin’s explosive power was far beyond that of gunpowder. The trouble was, nitroglycerin was highly unstable. It caused grisly explosions, including one in San Francisco that leveled a building and killed 15 people.
Nobel’s big invention — dynamite — was a way of stabilizing nitroglycerin to make it more practical for blasting rocks or for tunneling into mines. His aha moment came during a stay in Germany.
By combining the stabilized nitroglycerin paste with a detonator he’d invented earlier, Nobel had his practical explosive. He called it dynamite after the Greek word for power, dynamis.
TNT, in contrast to nitroglycerin, is very difficult to detonate. In fact, it took almost 30 years after its discovery for a chemist to notice TNT’s explosive properties! So, in short: Don’t say “TNT” when you mean “dynamite.”
With all that said, nitroglycerin and TNT do have some chemistry in common. Notice how they both have nitrogen atoms in their chemical structures? That’s no accident. Many explosives contain the element nitrogen. Oftentimes, one of the products of an explosive chemical reaction is nitrogen gas — N2. Nitrogen gas is super-stable. It’s in the air we breathe. And certain molecules have a tendency to give off a lot of energy to produce something so stable. In layperson terms: they go KABLOOEY.
When I worked in a lab I’d get jumpy just hearing about chemical compounds with that level of nitrogen atoms. Nowadays I only read about them, in the hilarious “Things I Won’t Work With” series by pharmaceutical researcher and pioneering blogger Derek Lowe.
2. Dynamite’s explosive essence — nitroglycerin — is also a valuable heart medication.
At about the same time Nobel was perfecting dynamite, scientists in Britain were using a molecule called amyl nitrite to treat angina, an excruciating chest pain connected with inadequate flow of blood and oxygen to the heart.
Noting similarities between amyl nitrite and nitroglycerin, London physician William Murrell became the first to recommend nitroglycerin as a treatment for angina in 1879. He did so after carrying out several studies with nitroglycerin (on himself as well as on other people).
Today, scientists know that the human body breaks down nitroglycerin into a molecule called nitric oxide. Not to be confused with laughing gas (a.k.a. nitrous oxide), nitric oxide widens blood vessels, increasing the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart, ultimately providing relief from chest pain.
The World Health Organization considers nitroglycerin one of its essential medicines for a basic health system. Even Alfred Nobel got a prescription for nitroglycerin from his doctor. Nobel declined the medication, and wrote about it in a letter:
3. Dynamite’s active ingredient is also available in a condom.
You read that right. The same blood-flow-stimulating properties that make nitroglycerin such a useful medication for relieving chest pain also may “enable a longer lasting sexual experience,” according to UK firm Futura Medical.
The company’s nitroglycerin gel, with the brand name of Zanifil, goes inside a latex condom. It is designed to stimulate blood flow to sustain men who report having trouble keeping erections with a condom. (The goal is to encourage safer sex by convincing those same men to stick with condoms.)
The condom first made news in 2011, when it was under development by Futura and consumer products company Reckitt Benckiser. (That deal has since fallen apart.) At the time, Futura’s chief executive explained that most of the patents on the condom have to do with immobilizing the nitroglycerin gel in the condom so that it doesn’t degrade the latex. (Read one patent here.)
Currently, the condom is available to residents of Belgium and The Netherlands. No word on whether it’s headed to the U.S., or to Alfred Nobel’s home country of Sweden.