Electric arc explosions: A thermal paradox
- 15 October 1987
- journal article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Journal of Applied Physics
- Vol. 62 (8) , 3477-3479
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.339269
Abstract
The maximum pressures developed for electric arc explosions in water range as high as 50 000 atm. It was thought that these pressures were due to a sudden heating of the water to high temperatures with resulting, and equally sudden, high pressures. There are several reasons why this hypothesis is paradoxical, the main one being that temperatures of no less than 107 K would be required somewhere in the water arc. In this communication we discuss recent water arc explosions performed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The unusual phenomena observed put these explosions in the category of experimental paradigm.This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
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