Diagram of explosive yield vs mushroom cloud height, illustrating the difference between 22 kiloton Fat Man and 15 megaton Castle Bravo explosions

TNT equivalent is a method of quantifying the energy released in explosions. "Fat Man" is the codename for the Atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, by the United States on August 9 Castle Bravo was the Code name given to the first US test of a so-called dry fuel thermonuclear Hydrogen bomb device detonated on March 1, The tonne of TNT is used as a unit of energy, approximately equivalent to the energy released in the detonation of this amount of TNT. Because Energy is defined via work, the SI unit for energy is the same as the unit of work &ndash the Joule (J named in honour of James Trinitrotoluene ( TNT) is a Chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO23CH3

The kiloton and megaton of TNT have traditionally been used to rate the energy output, and hence destructive power, of nuclear weapons (see nuclear weapon yield). A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of Energy, called the Yield, discharged when a Nuclear weapon is detonated expressed usually This unit is written into various nuclear weapon control treaties, and gives a sense of destructiveness as compared with ordinary explosives, like TNT. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT bans all nuclear explosions in all environments for military or civilian purposes More recently, it has been used to describe the energy released in other highly destructive events, such as asteroid impacts. Asteroids, sometimes called Minor planets or planetoids', are bodies—primarily of the inner Solar System —that are smaller than planets but

Value

A gram of TNT releases 980–1100 calories upon explosion. Trinitrotoluene ( TNT) is a Chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO23CH3 This article is about the unit of energy For its use in Nutrition and Food labelling regulations, see the article on Food energy. To define the tonne of TNT, this was arbitrarily standardized to 1000 thermochemical calories = 1 gram TNT = 4184 J (exactly). The joule (written in lower case ˈdʒuːl or /ˈdʒaʊl/ (symbol J) is the SI unit of Energy measuring heat, Electricity ^[1] To put this into perspective, a gram of food carbohydrate has approximately 4 kcal of energy, versus 1 kcal for a gram of TNT.

This definition is a conventional one. Explosives' energy is normally calculated using the thermodynamic work energy of detonation, which for TNT has been accurately measured at 1120 cal_th/g from large numbers of air blast experiments and theoretically calculated to be 1160 cal_th/g. In Thermodynamics, work is the quantity of Energy transferred from one system to another without an accompanying transfer of Entropy. ^[2]

The measured pure heat output of a gram of TNT is only 651 thermochemical calories ≈ 2724 J,^[3] but this is not the important value for explosive blast effect calculations. In Physics, heat, symbolized by Q, is Energy transferred from one body or system to another due to a difference in Temperature

Examples

• Conventional bunker buster bombs yield range from less than 1 ton to MOAB's 11 tonnes. A bunker buster is a Bomb designed to penetrate hardened targets or targets buried deep underground

• Minor Scale, a 1985 United States conventional explosion utilizing 4,800 short tons of ANFO explosive to simulate a 4 kt nuclear explosion, is believed to be the largest planned detonation of conventional explosives in history. Minor Scale was a test conducted by the United States Defense Nuclear Agency (now part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency) involving the detonation ANFO (or AN/FO, for ammonium nitrate / fuel oil) is a widely used Explosive mixture

• The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT (≈ 6. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. The Japanese city of ( is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshū, the largest of Japan 's Events 1538 - Bogotá, Colombia, is founded by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada. Year 1945 ( MCMXLV) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar 3×10¹³ joules). The nuclear weapons currently in the arsenal of the United States range in yield from 0. The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of Energy, called the Yield, discharged when a Nuclear weapon is detonated expressed usually 3 kt to 1. 2 Mt TNT equivalent, for the B83 strategic bomb. The B83 Nuclear weapon is a variable-yield Gravity bomb developed by the United States in the late 1970s entering service in 1983

• During the Cold War, the United States developed hydrogen bombs with a maximum theoretical yield of 25 Mt; the Soviet Union developed a prototype weapon, nick-named the Tsar Bomba, which was tested at 50 Mt, but had a maximum theoretical yield of 100 Mt. Cold War is the state of conflict tension and competition that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR and their respective allies from the The Teller–Ulam design is a Nuclear weapon design which is used in Megaton -range Thermonuclear weapons and is more colloquially referred to as "the The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 Tsar Bomba (ru Царь-бомба literally " King Bomb" is the Western name for the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (codenamed "Иван" (Ivan by its ^[4] The actual destructive potential of such weapons can vary greatly depending on conditions, such as the altitude at which they are detonated, the nature of the target they are detonated against, and the physical features of the landscape where they are detonated.

• The 1908 Tunguska event, believed to have been caused by an impacting comet or meteoroid, is estimated to have had a force ranging from 10–15 Mt. The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful Explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony Tunguska River in what is now See also Impact crater An impact event is the Collision of a large Meteoroid, Asteroid or Comet (generically

• Megathrust earthquakes record huge M_W values, or total energy released. A megathrust earthquake occurs at Subduction zones (destructive plate boundaries where one Tectonic plate is forced under (subducts another The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake released 9,560 gigatons of TNT equivalent, but its M_E (surface rupture energy, or potential for damage) was far smaller at 26. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea Earthquake that occurred at 005853 UTC on December 26 2004 with an Epicentre off the west coast of 3 megatons of TNT. The largest quake registered, the 1960 Chilean quake, released M_W almost 60,000 gigatons of TNT equivalent. The 1960 Valdivia earthquake or Great Chilean Earthquake (Gran terremoto de Valdivia of 22 May, 1960 is the most powerful Earthquake ever

• On a much grander scale, supernova explosions give off about 10⁴⁴ joules of energy, which is about ten octillion (10²⁸) megatons of TNT. A supernova (plural supernovae or supernovas) is a stellar Explosion.

By E = mc², when 1 kilogram of antimatter annihilates with 1 kilogram of matter the reaction produces 1. In Physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that for particles slower than light any Mass has an associated Energy and vice versa. In Particle physics and Quantum chemistry, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the Antiparticle to Matter, where antimatter is composed 8×10¹⁷ J, which is equal to 42. 96 Mt. ^[5]

See also

• Ton
• Tonne

References

1. ^ NIST Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI): Appendix B8—Factors for Units Listed Alphabetically
2. ^ Cooper, Paul. Units of mass There are three similar units of Mass called the ton: Long ton (simply ton in countries such as the United This article is about the tonne or metric ton For other tons see Ton. Explosives Engineering, New York: Wiley-VCH, 1996, p. 406.
3. ^ "Physics for Future Presidents, a textbook", 2001–2002, Richard A. Muller, Chapter 1. Energy, Power, and Explosions
4. ^ See Currently deployed U.S. nuclear weapon yields, Complete List of All U.S. Nuclear Weapons, Tsar Bomba, all from Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapon Archive.
5. ^ In antiproton annihilation, about 50% of this energy is carried off by effectively invisible neutrinos (see S. The antiproton ( pronounced p-bar) is the Antiparticle of the Proton. Neutrinos are Elementary particles that travel close to the Speed of light, lack an Electric charge, are able to pass through ordinary matter almost K. Borowski,Comparison of Fusion/Antiproton Propulsion systems); in contrast, almost 100% of electron-positron annihilation events emit their energy entirely as gamma rays. Electron-positron annihilation occurs when an Electron and a Positron (the electron's anti-particle) collide Gamma rays (denoted as &gamma) are a form of Electromagnetic radiation or light emission of frequencies produced by sub-atomic particle interactions

• Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI)
• Nuclear Weapons FAQ Part 1.3
• Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986.