Word: shell
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...instant a bomb explodes overhead, fission turns it into a rapidly growing "ball of fire," which dims for an imperceptible instant, then grows to a diameter of 900 feet at a temperature of 7,000° C. (see diagram). Around the fire ball forms a shock wave - a shell of air compressed so tightly that it glows white...
...weapons powerful enough to pierce the heavily armored, Russian-made tanks of the North Korean Communists. The first successful new weapon against the Red tanks was the 3.5 inch bazooka (TIME, July 31), which quickly proved its worth. Last week, the Army took the wraps off a new artillery shell guaranteed by ordnance experts to "kill any tank in the world as far as a gunner...
...shell is a 90-mm. projectile which gets its deadliness from the same "shaped charge" that is built into the bazooka rockets. But the shell, designed for the 90-mm. guns of the U.S. 45-ton General Pershing tanks, has much greater velocity than the bazooka rockets, and an effective combat range of 1,000 yards, ten times that of the bazooka...
Long familiar to ordnance men, the shaped charge* is a mass of high explosive with a conical cavity in its front end; the cavity is lined with a cone of thin metal. When the charge explodes, the wave of detonation starts at the rear of the shell; when the explosive waves hit the point of the metal liner, the metal comes under immense pressure and acts like a thin fluid. Like a jet-propelled stream of toothpaste, the fluid metal spurts forward, at speeds up to 30,000 feet a second. The jet of liquid metal and gas can pierce...
...work had a whale of a lot of work in it, and that seemed a good thing to the Victorian eye. Frith spent two busy years on his 3-ft.-by-7-ft. Derby Day, crammed the canvas with 3,000 spectators: a happy, seething mob of dandies, shell-game sharpers, yokels, gypsies, fine ladies, jockeys, kids and carnival performers on the green grass of Epsom Downs, under a smiling summer sky. The Royal Academy voted it "Picture of the Year" in 1858, and London's National Gallery hung it in a place of honor. For decades, Derby...