There's More to GAS than Flatulence:

 Did you know that the medical study of stomach gas,  farting, is called 'flatology' ?

Stomach GAS - NITROGEN, Carbon Dioxide, METHANE and Hydrogen, - is caused by our internal bacteria fermenting our food intake in the gastrointestinal tract.

WE ALL GOT IT .. and we all fart. - For health reasons (Atherosclerosis), in recent years, I have changed to a vegetable based 'vegan' type diet and now eat a lot more beans and cabbage etc.

NOT ME

An interesting aside is that only just over half of us produce enough METHANE and Hydrogen gases to enable lighting Farts - some do - some don't, as the bacteria varies among us, in it's make-up and processes.

EXPLOSIVES generally work by making lots of GAS and shockwaves.

Guns are HEAT ENGINES driven by gases.

Now - the reason BLACK POWDER is so smokey is that it converts less than half (43%) of its' material into GAS - while the solids, salts (potassic sulphate & carbonate), produced, make-up the smoke and fouling particles. 

(- When e.g. nitroglycerin explodes, there is virtually NO smoke and the temperature of the gases rises to around 5,000 Degrees C. )

- It is that high pressure expanding gas that pushes the lead ball or bullet out of a gun - creating a SHOCKWAVE as it is released to atmosphere.

SMOKEY

Gun Powder is an antique mixture of materials that when burnt at room temperature and ambient pressure produces GAS equal to 380 times the volume of the original powder charge. - BUT - at the elevated temperatures arising in the combustion chamber and barrel of a black powder gun, - perhaps as high as 2,200-3,000 Degrees C - that same gas expands to 3,000 times that volume and violently accelerates your projectile up and out of the barrel muzzle .. making a loud BANG.

Not remarkably efficient in the modern scheme of things - but it does the job.

Variables, (like the poor) are always with us - proportions of the mix, particle size and shape, density of particle, moisture content, etc - how far do you want to go?

FLASHY

I reckon that it's very interesting that it is BACTERIA in the gut that makes all that stomach gas we all have - while it is BACTERIA in Dung Heaps that digest that animal dung and make natural NITRATES, formed as crystals, that historically we used to extract to get our POTASSIUM NITRATE to mix with CHARCOAL and SULFER to make our earliest GUNPOWDER around a thousand years ago ..

Bacteria .. there's a lot more of them than us - 5 NONILLION - that's 5 followed by 30 zeros

Your body is crawling with them .. An estimated 30 trillion cells in your body — less than a third — are human. The other 70-90% are bacterial and fungal. Ninety-nine percent of the unique genes in your body are bacterial. Only about one percent is human. ref: Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body .. Link https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4991899/

FIT AND PROPER?

FIREARMS LICENCES FOR NZ POLICE

Marty K.