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The exploding wire method or EWM is a way to generate plasma that consists of sending a strong enough pulse of electric current through a thin wire of some electrically conductive material. The resistive heating vaporizes the wire, and an electric arc through that vapor creates an explosive shockwave .
Trip wires are frequently used in booby traps — where either a tug on the wire, or the release of tension on it, will trigger the explosives. Soldiers sometimes detect the presence of tripwires by spraying the area with Silly String. It will settle to the ground in areas where there are no wires; where wires are present, the "strings" will ...
Instead of heating up the explosive, the EBW detonator wire is heated so quickly by the high firing current that the wire actually vaporizes and explodes due to electric resistance heating. [20] That electrically-driven explosion causes the low-density initiating explosive (usually PETN ) to detonate, which in turn detonates a higher density ...
The EBW was invented by Luis Alvarez and Lawrence Johnston for the Fat Man–type bombs of the Manhattan Project, during their work in Los Alamos National Laboratory.The Fat Man Model 1773 EBW detonators used an unusual, high reliability detonator system with two EBW "horns" attached to a single booster charge, which then fired each of the 32 explosive lens units.
However, some electronic delays developed by IRA technicians could be set to accurately detonate a bomb weeks after it was hidden, which is what happened in the Brighton hotel bomb attack of 1984. Initially, bombs were detonated either by timer or by simple command wire. Later, bombs could be detonated by radio control.
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A time bomb's timing mechanism may be professionally manufactured either separately or as part of the device, or it may be improvised from an ordinary household timer such as a wind-up alarm clock, wrist watch, digital kitchen timer, or notebook computer. The timer can be programmed to count up or count down (usually the latter; as the bomb ...
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