Talk:Minor Scale

Largest?

Not by a long shot. I saw an old film of the US military stacking crates of TNT in the Nevada desert, enough to equal the blast of the Nagasaki or Hiroshima bomb, then setting it off to test how various equipment and structures reacted to the blast forces and ground shock. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.136.145.202 (talk • contribs) 05:55, 10 October 2006

That's nice. Cite it. With reliable sources.--Vidkun 13:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

But I believe that that test referred to above only was 100 Tons (0.1 kt). It would be kinda hard to stack 12,500 Tons (25 Million Pounds) of TNT and or dynamite. The Minor Scale test used ANFO, which can be poured down a hole (ammonium nitrate is in prill form and fuel oil is a liquid). Also, the test of the crates mentioned above happened at Los Alamos, NM.Joeylawn 00:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe you are talking about the rehersal for the Trinity test. That was done with <1kt of conventional explosives, meant to rehearse crew in procedures, and make sure instrumentation would work as expected.

This Page Needs Cleanup

Can someone assess the whole "Q&A" section here? It doesn't seem to be in Wikipedia format...not sure though. --Scottymoze (talk) 02:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Minor Scale/Heligoland

I removed the following text from the article:

[The Minor Scale explosion] is rated as second to the 'British Bang' disposal of ordnance on Heligoland in 1947 by the Guinness Book of Records, but this appears incorrect. ( According to [4] the energy released at Heligoland was 1.3x1020 ergs = 1.3x1013 joules, or about 3.2 kilotons of TNT equivalent. )

The reference cited, Willmore's analysis of the Heligoland explosions, was published in 1948, 37 years before the Minor Scale test. The Wikipedia article provided no equivalent assessment of the energy released by the Minor Scale explosion, but that's irrelevant. Regardless of what the data says, unless an outside source has declared the Minor Scale explosion greater than the Heligoland explosion, it is not our place to speculate, per WP:OR. --Fullobeans (talk) 04:51, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The 37 years is irrelevent - joules and ergs have not changed appreciably. Also the kiloton explosive is officially defined a 4.184x10⁹ joules- see Ton#Ton of TNT and the link on the Minor scale page quotes the test as 4 kilotons of explosive power, or more than 1.6x10¹³ joules. So there is no reasonable doubt Minor scale was larger. LouScheffer (talk) 05:34, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Found the amount of energy for Minor Scale. It's in the first reference, page 135. I had quotes from the reference in the article (see older versions) but someone took them out... LouScheffer (talk) 05:40, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I promise I'm not just trying to be difficult; read WP:SYN, it's the section of WP:OR which deals with specifically with situations like this. Regardless of how glaringly obvious they are, we can't draw conclusions on our own. If your assessment of the situation is correct, then I'm sure there's a source somewhere which explicitly states that Minor Scale was a larger explosion than Heligoland. If you know of one, add it to the article! If not, I'll put it on my To Do list. I've changed the wording for now so that it presents the data in a way which implies the same conclusion without stating it explicitly. Does that work as a compromise?

Unrelatedly, when reverting edits, do please double-check that you're not removing anything besides your intended target; I had some innocent reference markups and a well-meaning fact tag that got caught in the crossfire. ;) --Fullobeans (talk) 14:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand where you are coming from, but this is a problem of unit conversion, not OR or synthesis. Both numbers have reliable sources (peer-reviewed academic journals and official government reports.) One reports the energy in ergs, the other in kilotons, which has a strict definition in terms of energy. So it's just a matter of conversion, and no-one else, using the same sources, could in any way get a different answer. (Finding additional sources, on the other hand, could make the result different). This is exactly like finding that 'A' is 4 meters long, and 'B' 10 feet. The reader can confidently conclude that A is longer than B without research or synthesis. Finding a statement to this effect in an external document is not needed. LouScheffer (talk) 18:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I see what you're saying. My concern is just that if no one, in the past 20-odd years, has concluded that Minor Scale was larger than Heligoland, whereas some people (apparently; we don't actually have a cite for Guinness yet) have determined the opposite to be true, then there is indeed a possibility that conflicting data exists. And if Wikipedia is, consequently, the only published source in the world which states that Minor Scale was larger than Heligoland, well, that's original research. But that's where wording comes into play. There's a huge difference between saying (paraphrased) "Guinness is wrong; Minor Scale was larger" (which makes a pronouncement and a conclusion not specifically stated in either of the sources from which the data was taken, and which is, therefore, synthesis) and saying "Guinness states that Heligoland was larger, while these two sources report the energy of the respective explosions to be X and Y" (which merely reports the conflict between our sources). The latter is a more unwieldy sentence, but I do think it's the best we can do with the current crop of sources. Are you happy with the article as it stands? If not, we should request a third opinion, since it seems to be just the two of us here. --Fullobeans (talk) 19:29, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Unless Guiness reports its sources, I'd trust the scientific literature a lot more. LouScheffer (talk) 20:13, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Guinness might; this matter is complicated by the fact that neither of us appears to own a copy. I'm also not sure where Guinness ranks in the pantheon of reliable sources. At any rate, the current text is probably fine, since "Minor Scale was reported as 'the largest planned conventional explosion in the history of the free world'" is a sourced statement. I've listed this on Wikipedia:Third opinion, though, just for the sake of getting another pair of eyes to check it over. --Fullobeans (talk) 22:18, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

At Fullobeans's request, I checked my copy of 2002 Guinness (the latest version I have). It says Heligoland was "the largest single conventional explosion". It used a charge of 4,061 tonnes (8,952,970 lb.). There's no mention anywhere that I can see of Minor Scale. Make of that what you will. -- JackofOz (talk) 04:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)