Word: sparkingly
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...energy denotes roughly the wallop packed by a dime dropped on a table from a height of 2 in. But as the National Transportation Safety Board revealed in hearings held in Baltimore last week, minuscule can mean sinister. Calmly, patiently, safety-board explosion expert Merritt Birky explained that a spark carrying one-quarter millijoule of energy was all that was necessary to ignite the contents of the 12,890-gal. central fuel tank of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 off Long Island--a tank that then exploded, destroying the plane and killing all 230 people aboard...
...didn't take a missile. It didn't take a meteorite, a bullet or even a bird. In fact, the safety board still doesn't know the exact source of the spark that presumably ignited Flight 800's mostly empty central fuel tank, a container similar to those sloshing just below passengers' feet in many commercial carriers. But the trigger's precise identity may be disturbingly moot. In a week of technical testimony considerably more alarming than had been expected, safety-board chairman James Hall made it clear that the fuel, transformed from a stable liquid state to volatile vapors...
...mostly empty fuel tank gets as hot as TWA 800's was (about 145[degrees] at takeoff, because of the 400[degree] exhaust thrown off by air-conditioning units a foot away), the electrical charge necessary to detonate the resulting fumes is roughly a quarter of the smallest spark you feel when scuffing your foot on a rug. Said safety-board officer Peter Goelz: "We had no idea how little energy it took to cause an explosion." Hall remarked, "I for one don't see how every ignition source can ever be eliminated." The obvious conclusion: instead of trying...
What is the best way to spark a sluggish offense? How about by adding some spice on defense in the form of a little Basil...
Sure, it played a superb game against the Saints, showing an offensive spark that had been missing for most of the season. However, that win merely secured a split of the weekend's games, earning two conference points out of an expected four...