Explosions: How We Shook the World Page #3

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of the sulphur and of the saltpetre

so that they will be suitable for taking as a medicine,

- hopefully an elixir of life.

- Oh, I see!

'So, ironically, in trying to find a means to eternal life,

'the Chinese alchemists found a substance that could kill.'

I've never done any alchemy before.

This is my first venture into the world of alchemy.

If you make a success of it, it's a new career, really, isn't it?

- Potentially lucrative.

- Yes, indeed, indeed.

That looks pretty well stirred.

I would think now if you start cooking that,

that will finish the mixing.

Despite being earlier than the incendiary powder of 1044,

the chemistry of this mixture has the potential to be more explosive.

So because of the water in the honey,

that is dissolving the saltpetre.

- Yes.

- And allowing that to carefully coat all the bits of sulphur.

The particles of carbon and sulphur will now be very, very close to molecules of saltpetre

which, when they get hot enough,

will start releasing the oxygen just right up close to them.

I think that's going to go in a sec.

There's little puffs there.

Exciting little puffs. I say.

Just slightly move ourselves out of the immediate line of that. That's it.

Whoa! OK...

Wow!

- That was quite striking.

- Wow!

Well, as the Chinese alchemist said, don't try this at home.

So, incendiary mixtures were being explored by the Chinese alchemists

as early as the mid-ninth century

but from the 12th century, as China was swept by waves

of war with neighbouring peoples,

they started to use their fast-burning powder in a new way.

No longer just an incendiary,

it became an explosive propellant for projectiles.

The Chinese gave their new weapons names,

like the vast-as-heaven, enemy- exterminating yin-yang shovel,

the scary, ingenious, mobile, ever-victorious poison-fire rack

and my personal favourite,

the orifices-penetrating flying-sand magic-mist tube.

In all of them, they put the powder in a tightly confined space

and this fundamentally altered the way it behaved.

It was the discovery that would change warfare forever.

Confining gunpowder changes the speed of the reaction.

It goes from something that just burns into something that really explodes.

Gunpowder doesn't need air in order to burn.

It gets all the oxygen required from the crystals of saltpetre,

potassium nitrate, that are in there,

which means it'll still burn in a confined space

and putting it in a confined space increases the rate of reaction.

Put a little bit in here.

So I'm going to wrap it up.

When it's confined like this, all those grains,

the carbon, the sulphur and the potassium nitrate,

are all much closer together, which means

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