My observations during the explosion at Trinity (1945)

Re:My observations during the explosion at Trinity (1945) by iaw on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @01:00PM (#12736455)

I think you're right. Ideal gas law wouldn't apply to the plasma sphere but knowing shockwave strength at some distance you can figure out how much energy was transferred to the atmosphere.

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Re:My observations during the explosion at Trinity (1945) by adrianratnapala on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @02:54PM (#12737518)

I agree the calculation probably worked by measuring the kinectic energy of that half-shell by measuring its velocity*thickness directly using pieces of paper.

But I wouldn't count the ideal gas law out (see http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43696/will-ideal-...). My guess is that the huge temperatures involved will work in favour of an ideal-gas approximation.

Perhaps the more important thing is that things are happening on very short time-scales, far enough from equilibrium and temperature might not even be well defined.

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Re:My observations during the explosion at Trinity (1945) by Declanomous on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @02:58PM (#12737571)

That probably would work better. I tried doing the math and ended up with some really weird answers. Definitely not 10 kt.

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