Blog 21

First of all, go bucks, we destroyed Purdue tonight, and it was a fun time, even from the nosebleed section. I am even happier I chose Ohio State over Purdue. Anyways, for blog 21, I read an article about the history of gunpowder. This article turned out to be very disappointing because it was extremely short. My blog tonight will probably end up being longer than this article was. It provided many links to find other information, but so does Google and I don’t have to waste as much time looking through the page for links on Google. The author starts out talking about how important gunpowder is, and how it is traditionally made of charcoal, an oxidizer like saltpeter, and sulfur for stability. The ingredients are ground together and the result is called serpentine. She does not really explain the difference between gunpowder and serpentine at any point, so I was confused. She then talks about how since serpentine is dangerous sometimes it is mixed with water or wine to reduce the danger of a spark setting off a fire. Then, she talks about how black powder is made which apparently isn’t the same thing but it is made with the exact same ingredients. She then talks about how gunpowder is so explosive because the saltpeter adds extra oxygen to the mix and allows it to burn faster. If there was no saltpeter, the mixture would apparently burn like wood. Then she talks about smoke, that’s how it ends, thank god.