Abstract
AT the Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on February 24, Prof. W. A. Bone discussed “The Photographic Analysis of Explosion Flames”. Nowadays the photographic analysis of explosion flames has become an indispensable part of the scientific study of explosions. Prof. Bone described first, with experimental illustrations, how the earlier work of Mallard and Le Chatelier and of Berthelot and Vieille in France, as well as that of H. B. Dixon and his collaborators in Great Britain, during the period 1883–1903, revealed, not only the successive stages in gaseous explosions, but also much about the nature of the final phase of ‘detonation’ (l'onde explosive) with its intensive chemical action, high constant velocities (one or two metres per second) and shattering effects. Prof. Bone then dealt principally with recent developments in the designing of high-speed cameras by Mr. R. P. Fraser at the Imperial College, South Kensington, where it has now become possible not only to photograph,but also to analyse with precision, periodic movements in explosion flames occurring with frequencies up to a million a second. A number of the resulting photographs were exhibited showing the influence of compression waves in accelerating explosion flames and setting up detonation therein and, more particularly, the new phenomenon of ‘spin’ in detonation, which is due to a highly luminous comet-like ‘head’ of detonation spiralling through the medium with a frequency of several tens of thousands a second, and appears to be a concentrated locus of positively charged particles. These developments are not merely important but have also opened up a new field in the investigation of the propagation of chemical change through gaseous media under the most intensive conditions of temperature and pressure.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Photographic Analysis of Explosion Flames. Nature 131, 300–301 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131300c0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131300c0