# Nuclear weapons and sheets of glass. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 8, 2006, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863 "2006-05-08T09:08:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/1 "2006-05-08T09:08:18Z")
What’s the relationship between nuking a country and turning it into a “sheet of glass”? The only thing I can think of is that its a metaphor for “freezing” time in the affected areas. ---
**Author:** ![Fromage\_A\_Trois](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Fromage\_A\_Trois](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fromage_A_Trois)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/2 "2006-05-08T09:16:03Z")
I’ve always taken it to mean that the heat of the nuclear attack would melt anything that it didn’t vaporise - so you’d be left with a puddle of molten buildings, rock, metal, etc. Which would then flow to be level, and cool - not necessarily glass because of the impurities, but glass is made from molten sand. Perhaps it follows from observations made after A-Bomb tests in the desert? Just my WAG, you understand. ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/3 "2006-05-08T09:20:09Z")
Makes sense, better WAG then mine. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/4 "2006-05-08T09:36:26Z")
[Trinitite](http://www.minresco.com/trinitite/trin.htm): > [@](#): > > Early in the morning on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb blast was detonated at the Trinity Site. The actual explosion produced a blast equivalent to eighteen thousand tons of TNT. The resulting fireball that scorched the desert formed a depressed crater 800 yards in diameter, glazed with a light olive green, glass-like substance where the sand had melted and solidified again… > From close up the lake is a glistening encrustation of blue-green glass 2,400 feet in diameter, formed when the molten soil solidified in air. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/5 "2006-05-08T09:55:14Z")
Yup, it directly comes from the idea of heat and pressure turning sand into glass. In recent memory the phrase has almost always been used in regards to the Middle East which of course, being desert, has more than it’s fair share of sand. ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/6 "2006-05-08T15:06:01Z")
Oo! Oo! Trinitite! I got a piece, right here! Yes, it looks like glass, sort of. It is smooth on the “top” side. It’s green, and underneath it is very gritty and obviously made of fused sand. The floor of the Alamogordo desert around the test site was entirely made up of this new mineral. There is some very small alpha particle residual radioactivity from my chunk, although I don’t have any instrument capable of measuring it Tris ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/7 "2006-05-08T15:22:24Z")
Can meteor strikes in the desert do this? I vaguely remember something along those lines being mentioned in a documentary on people pursuing impact crater sites. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/8 "2006-05-08T15:55:40Z")
Indeed, **Squink** and **Omniscient** have it. More usually I see this referring to a [glass parking lot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_parking_lot), rather than sheet of glass. I’m not sure about meteors, but lightning strikes can fuse beach glass in to [Fulgurite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite) ([Google Image search](http://images.google.ca/images?hs=1Y7&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&q=Fulgurite&btnG=Search&percentage_served=*:100&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/9 "2006-05-08T19:23:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Can meteor strikes in the desert do this? I vaguely remember something along those lines being mentioned in a documentary on people pursuing impact crater sites. Yes, they’re called [tektites](http://www.galleries.com/minerals/mineralo/tektites/tektites.htm). A sufficiently large meteor impact might produce a large sheet of glass, like trinitite (except not radioactive, of course), but that’d be a real doozy of a meteor, and mostly they just produce small chunks. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/10 "2006-05-08T21:19:34Z")
[QUOTE=Triskadecamus] Oo! Oo! Trinitite! I got a piece, right here! [/QUOTE] Cool. BTW, do you have children? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/11 "2006-05-08T22:03:35Z")
If you’re as old as I am, you might remember a beautiful song by Bob Welch of Fleetwood Mac, called “Hypnotized.” > [@](#): > > Now it’s not a meaningless question > To ask if they’ve been and gone > I remember a talk about North > Carolina and a strange, strange pond > You see the sides were like glass > In the thick of a forest without a road > And if any man’s hand ever made that land > Then I think it would’ve showed Um, Bob. That’s from a meteor strike. No man’s hand was needed to make it. No woo-woo here. Try the next hippie over. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/12 "2006-05-08T23:50:53Z")
I’ve only ever heard it in the context of the middle east, referring to how it’s all desert. ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/13 "2006-05-09T02:12:56Z")
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant] Cool. BTW, do you have children? 🙂 [/QUOTE] I got the trinitite after I was done having kids. My kids are all older than the average for the board, now. Not to mention not living here within irradiation range of my chunk of glowing green glass. OK, so it doesn’t glow. So, what? Someone else on the board has one too. I sold it to him, when I bought mine. I ain’t sayin who, but he has had kids since then, I think. Tris ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/14 "2006-05-09T02:26:01Z")
[QUOTE=Triskadecamus] I got the trinitite after I was done having kids. [/QUOTE] And they used your testicles for night lights? ---
**Author:** ![Klaatu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Klaatu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Klaatu)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/15 "2006-05-09T05:48:02Z")
Slight aside: I visited Trinity Site several years ago (Not sure if still, but it used to open to the public twice a year for one day each time, May and Oct IIRC.) Busses would take groups down to Ground Zero, or however close they let us for about 15-20 mins. It was put on by the military and we were given a handout stating, along with the amount of radiation we would receive, ( roughly equivalent to three medical x-rays in a year, again IIRC) a fierce admonition in bold letters (paraphrasing) “DO NOT TOUCH, PICK UP OR TAKE ANY OF THE PRETTY GREEN GLASS! VERY DANGEROUS” I didn’t see any myself and I’m sure the part of the site we were let on had been picked over for fifty years. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-weapons-and-sheets-of-glass/355863/16 "2006-05-09T06:49:47Z")
Not all radiation is equal. [Here is a page specifically about alpha radiation, which is, on the whole, fairly harmless.](http://www.orau.gov/reacts/alpha.htm): > [@](#): > > 1. Alpha radiation is not able to penetrate skin. > > 2. Alpha-emitting materials can be harmful to humans if the materials are inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through open wounds. > > [snip] > > 1. Instruments cannot detect alpha radiation through even a thin layer of water, blood, dust, paper, or other material, because alpha radiation is not penetrating. > > 2. Alpha radiation travels a very short distance through air. > > 3. Alpha radiation is not able to penetrate turnout gear, clothing, or a cover on a probe. Turnout gear and dry clothing can keep alpha emitters off of the skin. Alpha radiation is composed of a pair of protons and a pair of neutrons, so it is a helium atom stripped of electrons. There are two\* other kinds of radiation detailed on the site linked above. \*(Or three, or two and a half, depending on how large of a difference you think there is between x-rays and gamma radiation.)