Word: wave
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...same. At the 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...
...shock wave rushes out like a solid steel wall. At some points it is joined by a reflected wave. The two combine to apply redoubled pressure (called the "Mach front"). Behind the shock wave comes a great wind, at a speed of 800 m.p.h. A mile from "ground zero" (the point directly under the burst), the speed of the wind drops to 200 m.p.h.; 1½ miles away, to 100 m.p.h. Behind the wind comes a partial vacuum, which acts like another wind coming from the opposite direction. Three miles away, the shock wave, wind and vacuum begin to peter...
...bomb smuggled in aboard ship might be set to explode under water at about the same time as one dropped from the air. Its shock wave traveling through the water would crush the hulls of ships in port. A million tons of radioactive water thrown into the air would smash nearby piers and warehouses, splash on others farther away, making them unapproachable for weeks or months. A wind-borne mist laden with deadly radioactive particles would threaten survivors to leeward...
...Mansei!" Almost on the heels of the first wave of Reds came a U.S. counterattack. Spearheaded by five tanks and two M-8 reconnaissance cars, truckloads of G.I.s from the 19th Infantry Regiment roared through the pass and down into the valley below. Heavy Communist fire damaged the two recon cars and three tanks. The G.I.s, supported by covering fire from the pass, spilled out of their trucks, began fighting a day-long melee in the valley and on the crests of the surrounding hills...
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...