Question:

# How many tons of TNT equals a nuclear explosion?

## The equivalent of 475000 tons of TNT, which translates to 950000000 pounds of TNT is equal to a nuclear explosion. AnswerParty slide!

TNT Measurement

In physics, mass (from Greek μᾶζα "barley cake, lump [of dough]") is a property of a physical body which determines the body's resistance to being accelerated by a force and the strength of its mutual gravitational attraction with other bodies. The SI unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). As mass is difficult to measure directly, usually balances or scales are used to measure the weight of an object, and the weight is used calculate the object's mass. For everyday objects and energies well-described by Newtonian physics, mass describes the amount of matter in an object. However, at very high speeds or for subatomic particles, General Relativity shows that energy is an additional source of mass. Thus, any body having mass has an equivalent amount of energy, and all forms of energy resist acceleration by a force and have gravitational attraction.

There are several distinct phenomena which can be used to measure mass. Although some theorists have speculated some of these phenomena could be independent of each other, current experiments have found no difference among any of the ways used to measure mass:

Because energy is defined via work, the SI unit for energy is the same as the unit of work – the joule (J), named in honor of James Prescott Joule and his experiments on the mechanical equivalent of heat. In slightly more fundamental terms, 1 joule is equal to 1 newton-metre and, in terms of SI base units

An energy unit that is used in atomic physics, particle physics and high energy physics is the electronvolt (eV). One eV  is equivalent to  J−191.60217653×10. In spectroscopy the unit cm−1 = 0.000123986 eV is used to represent energy since energy is inversely proportional to wavelength from the equation $E = h \nu = h c/\lambda$.

Explosives

TNT equivalent is a method of quantifying the energy released in explosions. The "ton of TNT" is a unit of energy equal to 4.184 gigajoules, which is approximately the amount of energy released in the detonation of one metric ton of TNT. The "megaton of TNT" is a unit of energy equal to 4.184 petajoules.

The kiloton and megaton of TNT have traditionally been used to rate the energy output, and hence destructive power, of nuclear weapons (see nuclear weapon yield). This unit is written into various nuclear weapon control treaties, and gives a sense of destructiveness as compared with ordinary explosives, like TNT. More recently, it has been used to describe the energy released in other highly destructive events, such as asteroid impacts. However, TNT is not the most energetic of conventional explosives. Dynamite, for example, has about 60% more energy density (approximately 7.5 MJ/kg, compared to about 4.7 MJ/kg for TNT).

Trinitrotoluene Ton

The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy discharged when a nuclear weapon is detonated, expressed usually in TNT equivalent (the standardized equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene which, if detonated, would produce the same energy discharge), either in kilotons (kt; thousands of tons of TNT) or megatons (Mt; millions of tons of TNT), but sometimes also in terajoules (1 kiloton of TNT = 4.184 TJ). Because the precise amount of energy released by TNT is and was subject to measurement uncertainties, especially at the dawn of the nuclear age, the accepted convention is that one kt of TNT is simply defined to be 1012 calories equivalent, this being very roughly equal to the energy yield of 1,000 tons of TNT.

The yield-to-weight ratio is the amount of weapon yield compared to the mass of the weapon. The theoretical maximum yield-to-weight ratio for fusion weapons (thermonuclear weapons) is 6 megatons of TNT per metric ton of bomb mass (25 TJ/kg).]citation needed[ Yields of 5.2 megatons/ton and higher have been reported for large weapons constructed for single-warhead use in the early 1960s. Since this time, the smaller warheads needed to achieve the increased net damage efficiency (bomb damage/bomb weight) of multiple warhead systems, has resulted in decreases in the yield/weight ratio for single modern warheads.

Petaton

A disaster is a natural or man-made (or technological) hazard resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment. A disaster can be ostensively defined as any tragic event stemming from events such as earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or explosions. It is a phenomenon that can cause damage to life and property and destroy the economic, social and cultural life of people.

In contemporary academia, disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk. These risks are the product of a combination of both hazard/s and vulnerability. Hazards that strike in areas with low vulnerability will never become disasters, as is the case in uninhabited regions.

Environment

Finance is the allocation of assets and liabilities over time under conditions of certainty and uncertainty. A key point in finance is the time value of money, which states that a unit of currency today is worth more than the same unit of currency tomorrow. Finance aims to price assets based on their risk level, and expected rate of return. Finance can be broken into three different sub categories: public finance, corporate finance and personal finance.

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