 He said the physicists used the weight of explosive to work out how it would affect its surroundings. "We know that the more explosive we have the more energy will be released when the charge is set off. "From the pressure pulse generated by the explosion, we can tell if windows are going to be smashed or if whole buildings will be demolished," he said. He explained that the further from the blast the lesser the effects until only a faint bang is audible. "From the amount of explosive that Guy Fawkes had we can work out that if you were a third of a mile away you should have been okay with just a few broken windows around you. Further away and you might have just heard some noise," he said. He added: "If Guy Fawkes was an expert in explosives and so knew what he was doing and had the gunpowder confined in barrels and well packed-in, it could have been almost as powerful as the equivalent TNT explosion so this is a fairly good model," he said.
Plot was a damp squib - the history of Bonfire Night
| 
