Explosion energy calculation

Lex Fridman and his guest, Luís Batalha, discussed two notable examples of explosion energy calculations. One is the historical account of Enrico Fermi, a physicist who calculated the energy of the first atomic bomb explosion during the Manhattan Project. Fermi did this by tearing paper into pieces, throwing them into the air as the shockwave arrived, and measuring their displacement to estimate the explosion's energy 1.

Batalha also replicated Fermi's methodology more recently to estimate the energy of the Beirut explosion. He analyzed a viral video of a bride during the blast, measuring the displacement of her dress to calculate the energy based on her distance from the explosion. This approach uses similar principles to determine the energy yield of the explosion from visual cues 2.