I have heard that an explosion can best be summed up as energy trying to stabilize itself. Is this true?

Question

just curious.

Answer 1

That's A way of looking at it, but it's not technically accurate.

An explosion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion ) is really two things, a rapid increase in volume and energy, followed by dispersion of the overpressure, heat, and ejecta.

Note that turning on a gas burner can be consided to be an explosion, although it's more detailed description is a deflagration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflagration ), while the more common connotation is a detonation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonation ), wherein the pressure waves are supersonic.

The second part is the dispersion, which can be modeled with Fick's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick%27s_law ).