Collected Item: “Sugar”
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Sugar
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
text,video,photograph
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
Calorimetry is my least favorite part of chemistry but it usually can have very interesting applications in regard to shower thoughts. One day I was thinking about whether or not sugar was more powerful than C4 due to a MinuteEarth video saying sugar had a higher J/kg ratio than TNT so I looked into it. I found an online source saying it was 3 * 10^6 joules per pound released in an explosion. So what I did next looked at the caloric content of 1 gram of sugar: 4 calories, which in scientific terms is 4 kilocalories (our colloquial use of calorie is actually 1 kilocalorie) and then 4 kCal was translated into joules which is about 16736 joules per one gram.
453.9 grams of sugar are in one pound of sugar so then I multiplied 453.9 grams by 16736 J/g to get the number of joules stored in one pound of sugar. It equals 7.59128224 *10^6, more than double, almost triple the energy of the same amount of C4 that could be released by sugar if in the right scenario.
I was not surprised at the number but I wanted to see some real-life examples of how sugar, in the right scenarios, could possibly unleash it's hellish powers.
The attached photo is from a 2008 sugar factory explosion in Georgia, the sugar was suspended in small particles throughout the air which is the prime capability for explosions, and boy does it look strong. 14 people died and 36 were injured in that incident. Just something to think about the next time you are baking.
453.9 grams of sugar are in one pound of sugar so then I multiplied 453.9 grams by 16736 J/g to get the number of joules stored in one pound of sugar. It equals 7.59128224 *10^6, more than double, almost triple the energy of the same amount of C4 that could be released by sugar if in the right scenario.
I was not surprised at the number but I wanted to see some real-life examples of how sugar, in the right scenarios, could possibly unleash it's hellish powers.
The attached photo is from a 2008 sugar factory explosion in Georgia, the sugar was suspended in small particles throughout the air which is the prime capability for explosions, and boy does it look strong. 14 people died and 36 were injured in that incident. Just something to think about the next time you are baking.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#calorimetry,#bomb,#tnt,#sugar,#joules,#physics,#math
Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mWxL8upOPo
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Me,MinuteEarth
Give this story a date.
2021-02-19