The Blast Wave

As we remarked in the introductory chapter, in 1941, Sir Geoffrey Taylor was asked by the Defence Ministry in the U.K., much before the atom bomb was actually produced, to attempt to predict the mechanical effects such a nuclear device would bring about-in contrast to those of a common explosive bomb produced by the sudden generation of a large amount of gas at a high temperature in a confined space. The precise question posed was: “Would similar effects be produced if energy could be released in a highly concentrated form unaccompanied by the generation of gas?” It is remarkable how the analysis of Taylor, based on some physical assumptions, led to some precise answers which agreed rather closely with the experimental results made available much later. The self-similar analysis of Taylor gave an accurate answer up to the point where the maximum pressure behind the front decreased to about 10 atmospheres. It was Taylor’s special gift to see how apparently complicated phenomena could be expressed in mathematical terms and to introduce a quantitative aspect into their description. He would always idealize the problem so that processes or factors expected to be of little relevance could be ignored. He would also identify all the relevant physical or geometrical parameters occurring in the data of the problem, from which information may be quickly culled.