EXPLOSIONS (1) Taylor & Trinity

How big was the first nuclear bomb, code-named Trinity? Detonated in the desert of New Mexico just three weeks before Hiroshima, it's energy was far beyond any conventional bomb. But how big was it? In this first episode on the physics of explosions we recount how the British physicist G.I. Taylor estimated the energy of the bomb just by looking at the pictures of the explosion. Taylor's method requires very limited mathematical background, while being surprisingly effective. It is a classical introduction to an outlook on Nature revealing the mechanics at play behind motion. https://www.numbersnature.org/explosions/1-taylor-trinity Chapters: 0:00 Intro 4:35 Power Law 8:46 Units & Dimensions 12:23 The Mechanics at Play Authors: Marc-Antoine Fardin (Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, Université Paris Cité) Mathieu Hautefeuille (Institut de Biologie Paris-Seine, Sorbonne Université) Vivek Sharma (Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago) Acknowledgements: Anna Part (Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History) Greg Spriggs (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) References: Mack (1947) https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005979984 Taylor (1950a) https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1950.0049 Taylor (1950b) https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1950.0050 Bainbridge (1976) https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5306263 Brixner (1983) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.934734 Porneala (2006) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2393158 Source of the Trinity footage and pictures: Los Alamos National Laboratory https://www.lanl.gov/ Alex Wellerstein https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/trinity/ https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945 https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/julian-e-mack https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/high-speed-photography Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research