Word: ammonium
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Like many another explosive, nitramon contains ammonium nitrate. It also contains a stable carbon compound (formula secret) which only reluctantly releases its carbon to combine with the nitrate's oxygen. Once detonated, however, nitramon explodes with 40% more force than TNT. It costs less than some grades of dynamite. The company claims that it is impervious to cold, works under water, should make quarry blasting and coal vein stripping completely safe up to the moment of "shooting." Politically timely was the assurance that nitramon's value is strictly limited to peacetime...
...minded Viscount Haldane, lord chancellor of the Ramsay Macdonald (1924) Labor cabinet; author of Daedalus and Callinicus in the widely-read "Today and Tomorrow Series" of prophetic essays (E. P. Dutton & Co.); prophet of the extinction of agriculture (by synthetic foods); savior of child life by his discovery of ammonium chloride as a cure for convulsions...
...distillation of coal has been undertaken mainly to produce illuminating gas and the residue of coke, and has been conducted at high temperatures. The new process, by conducting the distillation of the coal at low temperature, sacrifices about half of the maximum obtainable illuminating gas, as well as ammonium sulphate. On the other hand, the illuminating gas resulting from the new process is of a better quality, and five times the amount of motor fuel oil is obtained, in addition to benzine, pitch, creosote and innumerable coal tar products...
...relative strength or weakness of the expert scientific knowledge of the two great groups of combatants. A few examples taken at random from this field may serve the present purpose. The British Minister of Munitions stat- ed not long ago that the war would be won by ammonium nitrate. What he meant to emphasize was the fact that an adequate supply of explosives was essential to victory and that this supply depended, under the conditions of today, on getting ammonium nitrate in sufficient quantities. This, of course, is a chemical problem, and Germany gained an immense advantage by foreseeing...