Can a sudden change in temperature cause an explosion?

2 Thermal explosions. For an exothermic reaction, the heat evolved during the course of the reaction raises the temperature of the reacting mixtures, thereby accelerating the reaction rates, leading to further heating and further reaction, until an explosion occurs.

What happens when cold air is rapidly heated?

What happens when air is heated or cooled? So air, like most other substances, expands when heated and contracts when cooled. Because there is more space between the molecules, the air is less dense than the surrounding matter and the hot air floats upward. This is the concept used in the hot air balloons.

What happens when extreme heat meets extreme cold?

They found that, as heat flows from the surface of a hot particle to a cold droplet, a vapor layer forms between them. Heat is exchanged during that brief contact, but the particle and droplet never actually touch, because the vapor layer forms a high-pressure zone that the droplets cannot overcome.

What temperature are explosions?

Initially, most of this energy goes into heating the bomb materials and the air in the vicinity of the blast. Temperatures of a nuclear explosion reach those in the interior of the sun, about 100,000,000° Celsius, and produce a brilliant fireball. The fireball shortly after detonation.

Are explosions spontaneous?

An explosion is a type of spontaneous chemical reaction that, once initiated, is driven by both a large exothermic change (great release of heat) and a large positive entropy change (great quantities of gases are released) in going from reactants to products, thereby constituting a thermodynamically favorable process …

Can fire and ice make an explosion?

Steam explosions are often encountered where hot lava meets sea water or ice. Such an occurrence is also called a littoral explosion. A dangerous steam explosion can also be created when liquid water or ice encounters hot, molten metal.

How long did the fire burn in the cold due to explosion?

The fire burned for 10 days, releasing a large amount of radiation into the atmosphere. The Chernobyl plant did not have the fortified containment structure common to most nuclear power plants elsewhere in the world. Without this protection, radioactive material escaped into the environment.

What happens to metal when it gets cold?

Metals that are typically ductile at room temperature may lose that in the colder temperature and become stiffer. Brittle transition temperature is the temperature where fractures in steel change from ductile to brittle. In other words, instead of bending, it breaks.

Can you put boiling water in a water gun?

When they squirted the gun off their porch in Northern Ontario, Canada, where the temperature was a deadly -42 degrees, the boiling water instantly freezes, creating pure magic in the air.