• Question: What is the most challenging & largest explosions you have worked on?

    Asked by seen520sunn on 13 Nov 2024.
    • Photo: Rachel Edwards

      Rachel Edwards answered on 13 Nov 2024:

      I wonder whether many people will answer this one! 😀
      In my PhD I worked on developing experiments that would go into explosive magnets. This was so we could make really strong magnetic fields and see how different materials behaved in them. By using an explosion we could have a magnetic field that was around 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger than a fridge magnet, but only for a tiny fraction of a second.
      The experiment itself was done by one of the more senior researchers, but it was really interesting having to design an experiment that might work.

    • Photo: Martin McMahon

      Martin McMahon answered on 13 Nov 2024:

      OK, this is a strange question, and although not directly connected to any of my current work, my first choice when I was at school was to try and join the army. During some of the training I spent time with the Royal Engineers and we were taught how to blow things up with plastic explosive. We were each give a lump of explosive about the size of your hand and we had to make an explosion on the ground. This did make a very loud bang, and a small crater in the ground, so definitely the largest explosion I have ever worked on!

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