Explosives may be classified in various ways, according to the purpose of the classification, but the great majority of them fall naturally into two main divisions: propellants and high explosives.
Propellants explode comparatively slowly, and are used to propel projectiles from fire-arms.
Propellants are of two sorts, according as they are intended for use in shot-guns or rifled fire-arms.
The chief propellants arc nitrocellulose, also called nitrocotton or guncotton, and nitroglycerine.
Service explosives, for naval and military purposes, are divided into propellants and high explosives.
The leading idea for improvements in relation to propellants is to obtain the greatest possible pressure regularly developed, and at the same time the lowest temperatures.
Consequently there is much danger in manufacture and storage, and however these mixtures have been made up, they are quite out of the question as propellantson account of their great tendency to explode in the manner of a detonator.
With the modern colloid propellants the most dangerous operations are the chemical processes in the preparation of nitroglycerin, the drying of guncotton, &c.
Nearly all the explosive compounds in actual use either for blasting purposes or as propellants are nitrogen compounds, and are obtained more or less directly from nitric acid.
The simplest examples of propellants of the smokeless class are compressed gases.
Figure 9 shows graphically the achievements of America in manufacturing propellants and explosives.
The result was an enormous production of propellants and explosives in the United States during the period of American belligerency, no other prime phase of the ordnance program being carried to such a stage of development.
The reader will clearly see the distinction between propellants and explosives.
Black powder (above) is a mechanical mixture; modern propellants are chemical compounds.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "propellants" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
