What makes nitroglycerin so unstable

In fact, 4 moles of nitroglycerin produces 35 moles of hot gases. One advantage that nitroglycerin has over some other high explosives, like TNT, is that no solid forms of carbon in the form of soot or smoke is produced when it is detonated. This allows nitroglycerin to be used to make 'smokeless powders', which is of great advantage to artillery or naval gunners whose field of vision does not then become obscured during battle by clouds of billowing smoke. Nitroglycerin has one major disadvantage, however - it is very, very unstable.

To be a useful explosive, a substance has to be able to withstand, without detonating, the jolts and bumps both of its manufacture, and of its transportation to where it will be used.

Clearly, nitroglycerin is far too dangerous for this, and many people lost their lives in the last century trying to use nitroglycerin for peaceful purposes like quarrying. Eight hundred pounds of dynamite exploding. Library of Commons Ascanio Sobrero, born on this day in , invented nitroglycerin.

Asciano Sobrero was badly injured in a lab accident during one of his experiments with nitroglycerine. Wikimedia Commons The story of how much credit this budding industrialist gave to the inventor of nitroglycerin is a bit muddied by later conflict between the two men, but the Nobel Prize website and Nobel's biographer Fant both state that Nobel never tried to claim credit for that discovery. The reaction which follows is highly exothermic, i.

Liquid nitroglycerine is colorless if pure. It is soluble in alcohols but insoluble in water. And as we learnt from poor old Arzt the ill-fated science teacher in Lost, when used in dynamite sticks that have been left to rot in the middle of the jungle for god knows how long, it becomes incredibly unstable. But, as we discover in the video above by the UK's Royal Institution, a contact explosive called nitrogen triiodide takes this instability to a whole new level.

Even a mosquito landing on it will send the whole thing up in vibrant purple smoke. The reason nitrogen triiodide is so unstable is down to its molecular structure - one nitrogen atom and three iodine molecules all on one side due to how the nitrogen's electrons are arranged.