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solving crimes with physics
Once the smoke had cleared, a massive rescue effort was initiated. At
the same time, the work of examining the evidence began. Bomb experts
from around the country came to work on the scene, hoping to help con-
vict the men who had orchestrated the deadliest attack in the United States
before September 11, 2001.
It soon became clear to experts that the bomb had been made from
readily available commercial components, including racing fuel and am-
monium nitrate, a fertilizer used on farms all around the country. An analy-
sis of the energy generated by the explosion revealed the builders were
very well versed in the dark art of bomb making.
Bomb Explosions—
Deadly Weapons
Crimes are never nice, but using a bomb to commit one is particularly
dastardly. A bomb is a very indiscriminate way to kill because, unlike a
gun, a bomb is very difficult to aim at just one target. There are people
who understand the way bombs work and how they can be carefully posi-
tioned to cause very little damage to anything but the intended target, but
these people usually work in law enforcement or the military. Bombs are an
interesting and deadly mix of physics and chemistry, and the people who
understand how they work are usually very intelligent individuals with a
sound understanding of both sciences.
Unfortunately, bombs are often detonated by individuals who know very
little about physics; they may have the basic knowledge required to create
the bomb, but they fail to comprehend how the bomb will behave once it
explodes. The results may take them by surprise; in some cases, the explo-
sion may even take the perpetrators’ lives as well as their victims’.
