90
A bomb site.
solving crimes with physics
out from the device, and structures nearby absorb some of the energy. Most
bombs do damage in a short range, but the overall energy of the blast is
the ultimate determinant of the distance the explosion can spread.
People who know how bombs work can examine a blast area and de-
termine where the bomb that caused it was when it exploded and the ap-
proximate amount of energy released by the blast. In fact, it is possible to
carefully design a bomb to release its energy in a chosen direction; it is a
matter of knowing how the process works. A blast normally breaks through
