TNT ? No, flour or sugar will be fine !

[lovejoy0120]

I read somewhere that if there are a lot of sugar or flour particles in a space and you introduce a source of ignition there will be a very small explosion.My question being how do you explode flour or sugar? (note :i'm an english born christian,not a radical islamist)This is not a load of old tosh as I have read about a few flour mill explosions in the past.

Thanks

[fo3nix]

Well it doesn't really matter to me whether you're a christian or a muslim, but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_bomb

[Siamsal]

I once spent ages trying to get a big Nescafe tin with some flour in it to explode. It just wouldn't!

[RATTER15]

Any dust will in fact explode, look what happens when you sprinkle iron filings on to a naked flame, well its the same principle, its more of a flash of of sparks in very quick succession, even with non flammable dust. The biggest problem in flour mills is you usually get two explosions, you get the first explosion from igniting airborne dust, this first explosion will shake the whole building, every ledge often inches thick in dust, this dust then turns airborne and is ignited by the first explosion, this second explosion being the biggest will often blow the place apart.

I think you would be hard pushed to make a bomb on this principle.

[Toureman]

If you do there could also be a very big explosion.

On the floor of windmills that ground corn the cogs that turned the grinding stones were always made of wood as metal ones could cause a spark and blow up the whole mill.

[Birt]

You need to aerosolise (not sure if that is a word!!) the particles to enable combustion any combustible material areosolised (someone tell me if that is a word!!!) correctly could cause an explosion.