History Of Gunpowder Essay Research Paper GUNPOWDERGunpowder

History Of Gunpowder Essay, Research Paper

GUNPOWDER

Gunpowder is the oldest of all explosives. It was used by the ancient

Chinese, Arabs, and people of India first. But exact directions on how to make

it were not known to the western World until 1242, when Roger Bacon of Oxford

University, in England published a book in which he told the ways to make

gunpowder. Today gunpowder is not used as much as more powerful explosives

After Roger Bacon published his formula for gunpowder, Berthold

Schwarz, a German monk, developed it as a practical explosive in the thirteen

hundreds. Schwarz is said to have invented a firearm which exploded shells by

the action of gunpowder. Gunpowder was being used in cannons as early as

thirteen forty-six. At that time, gunpowder was actually in powder form. It had to

be loaded carefully into the cannon, so that the charge would be packed

properly. If it were packed too tightly, the flame would not light the powder

because it couldn’t get enough oxygen. But if it were packed too loosely, it

couldn’t build up enough gas forces to push the cannonball to it’s target.

A new way to make gunpowder into grains, instead of powder, was

invented in the fourteen hundreds. In this method you would moisten it and

pound it into a cake. Then it was broken into small bits and put into a sieve to be

sifted. The pieces that came through the sieve were different shapes and would

not fit together well enough to pack tightly, so that careful packing of a cannon

was not necessary.

When a long-barreled, rifled cannon came into use, it became necessary

to slow down the burning rate of the gunpowder. Its swift explosive force would

often burst the barrel of the gun, causing the man who fired it to be in almost as

much danger as the man he was attempting to shoot. Captain Rodman of the

United States Army finally developed a gunpowder that was made into grains

shaped into hexagonal prisms. These prisms were large and had several

rounded parallel grooves in them. When the prisms were placed end to end,

these grooves fitted to make a continuous channel. The flame burned outward

from these grooves and inward from the surface of the prisms. This kept up a

continuous flow of gases for long periods, and caused a long, slow push on the

shell. As a result, this kind of explosions could hurl the shell long distance.

Smokeless powder was invented in eighteen eighty-four, and had replaced

gunpowder for use in firing shells by the early nineteen hundreds. But

gunpowder was still made in large quantities in the United States for many years

after that. During World War One, gunpowder was used as a base in many

shells, bombs, and torpedoes.

heavier armor and new types of fighting equipment used in World War

Two required more powerful explosives, but gunpowder was still used as a

primer for the artillery shells. Another guns in artillery or naval guns is as a

charge for military salutes.

An explosive is any material that, when ignited by heat or shock,

undergoes rapid decomposition or oxidation. This process releases energy that

is stored in the material in the form of heat and light, or by breaking down into

gas compounds that occupy a much larger volume that the original . Because

this expansion is very rapid, large volumes of air are pushed aside by the

expanding gasses. This expansion occurs at a speed greater

than the speed of sound, and so a sonic boom occurs. This explains the

mechanics behind an explosion. Explosives occur in several forms: high-order

explosives which detonate, low order explosives, which burn, and primers, which

may do both.

High order explosives detonate. A detonation occurs only in a high order

explosive. Detonations are usually incurred by a shock wave that passes

through a block of the high explosive material. The shock wave breaks apart the

molecular bonds between the atoms of the substance, at a rate approximately

equal to the speed of sound traveling through that material. In a high explosive,

the fuel and oxidizer are chemically bonded, and the shock wave breaks apart

these bonds, and re-combines the two materials to produce mostly gasses.

T.N.T., ammonium nitrate, and R.D.X. are examples of high order explosives.

Low order explosives do not detonate; they burn, or undergo oxidation. when

heated, the fuel(s) and oxidizer(s) combine to produce heat, light, and gaseous

products. Some low order materials burn at about the same speed under

pressure as they do in the open, such as black powder. Others, such as

gunpowder, which is correctly called nitrocellulose, burn much faster and hotter

when they are in a confined space, such as the barrel of a firearm; they usually

burn much slower than black powder when they are ignited in unpressurized

conditions. Black powder, nitrocellulose, and flash powder are good examples of

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