I’m reading about the transcontinental railroad and it sounds pretty dangerous. Does anyone still use it in a non-stabilized form?
Still used in double base and triple base artillery propellants. Produced on site and trucked to the mixing area. Not much travel on the base but it still gets moved by truck.
Good lord - it’s like Nobel died in vain. 
Is it mixed with anything (like a stabilizer)?
Once it’s in the shell, how are the shells handled? They can’t expect un-stabilized nitro to go bouncing around a battlefield, right? Right?
How common are these things?
I’m not certain that anybody pays enough to make me sign up for driving the truck (or mixing the stuff).
It is still used as a heart medicine, and apparently, it has been put into condoms to facilitate firmer erections. :eek:!:eek:!:eek:
I hope we’re not talking about the same chemical. Are we? Say we’re not. Please?
Wanna bang?
Same compound, but in stabilised formulation. A fraction of a milligram per dosage, in a dilute solution (oral spray) or sublingual tablet (NITROSTAT is a stabilized sublingual compressed nitroglycerin tablet that contains 0.3 mg, 0.4 mg , or 0.6 mg nitroglycerin; as well as lactose monohydrate, NF; glyceryl monostearate, NF; pregelatinized starch, NF; calcium stearate, NF powder; and silicon dioxide, colloidal, NF.)
Works by releasing nitric oxide, a potent vasodilator to treat heart conditions, such as angina pectoris and chronic heart failure.
I think you are confused here. The nitroglycerin is combined with other ingredients (traditionally nitrocellulose) to form a very stable propellant (the double base propellant) for driving the shells or bullets out of the gun. The nitrogylcerin would be produced on site at the propellant factory and transported within the site.
The ratios of the two ingredients can be varied to give different characteristics. Certain blasting gelatins are made that are safe to handle and will detonate only with a blasting cap. Propellants are stable enough that they cannot be persuaded to detonate at all, but will still burn very quickly and well.
The explosive parts of the shell (the bit going down range at high velocity) are typically based on what are called military high explosives which consist of various mixtures of RDX, HMX, TNT, aluminum powder, and various binding agents. Nitroglycerin is conspicuously absent.
-DF
More likely a 1950smovie.
OK, mixed with nitrocellulose - much better. IIRC, TNT is (or was) stabilized nitroglycerin.
TNT is trinitrotoluene, hence the initials. Nitrogycerin is a different compound.
Actually, dynamite is stabilized nitroglycerin. TNT is, as already mentioned, a completely different chemical.
I’m old. They all look the same.
Why were elementary school kids in Dayton OH repeatedly cautioned (huge posters all over the school) about the dangers of blasting caps and how we should never, ever touch one.
They made me hope I WOULD find one - especially with fuse ignition - sound like much more fun than the silly cherry bombs we got to play with (Dayton was home of United Fireworks at the time).
It used to be in wide use in the plotting of children’s cartoons, but I think it’s less common these days.