• Question: what chemicals do you expect were involved during world wars? i.e would have been used in acidic mixtures, bombs etc.

    Asked by bryony123456789 to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sarah Cook

      Sarah Cook answered on 11 Jun 2011:

      I’m not really sure this answers your question but as part of my first job after university I worked on a radioactive survery of a former breakers yard where old aircraft from WW2 were dismantled.
      The dials on the aircraft controls were all painted with luminous paint so they could be seen in the dark. When the gieger counter picked up the radioactivite dials often buried up to 15-20cm below the soil surface we had to dig up the dials so they could be disposed appropriately.
      This was quite different work from the lab work I’d always done previously made all the more interesting by being followed round the field by a bunch of horses who were very curious about what we were doing!

    • Photo: David Corne

      David Corne answered on 11 Jun 2011:

      Lots and lots of gunpowder! (see http://chemistry.about.com/od/historyofchemistry/a/gunpowder.htm)
      Also, about 1Kg of uranium was used in the Hiroshima atom bomb, and about 1Kg of plutonium in the Nagasaki bomb. I think it’s all so ridiculous – I hope wars in the future will just use silicon — i.e. we will just simulate them on computers.

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 12 Jun 2011:

      Hi, I really don’t know the answer to this one. I think your guess is as good as mine!!

    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      No idea – do you have any ideas bryony123456789?

    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Lots of very unpleasant things! Chemical agents like Mustard Gas, explosive materials like Nitroglycerine, and the most unpleasant of all, radioactive materials like those used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such as Uranium isotope, a slightly heavier version of one of the heaviest metals in the periodic table.

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