Do all explosives contain a large amount of Nitrogen in their formula ?

Question

What is the reason for this relation between explosives and nitrogen content ?
Are their other elements of the nitrogen group (like halogens is the group for chlorine , fluorine etc ) that share this same propensity to form highly explosive compounds ?

Answer 1

There are several explosive mixtures and compound that do not contain nitrogen. However, usually, they are more more sensitive (thus less safe), not always as powerful, and costlier to produce than nitrogen based compounds.
The reason nitrogen is present is most of the popular explosives is that the atom can have a valance of 5 and of 3, and that the 5 valance is less stable than the 3. If the nitrogen goes from valance 5 to 3, it liberates energy, and some part of the molecule is broken off, if that part is something that can turn into a gas, or react with some other part of the molecule or with other compounds mixed with it, it would thus expand in volume very suddenly; this expansion is what we refer to as an explosion.

Answer 2

Well there are a huge range of things that go bang.

Hydrogon and Oxygon will make a great big bang, and was enough to blow up the space shuttle.

So the answer is no.

However, one of the most common homemade explosives used by terrorists is made from Nitrogen based fertiliser mixed with diseal fuel (I don't know the full details, but it is pretty easy to get the basic ingredients and to make).

So very often methods of detecting explosives will concentrate on looking for that.

Military grade explosives, I don't know about.

Answer 3

All the common chemical explosives I can think of contain nitrogen. I wish I could give you a better answer, but I'm in the dark about the reason for this.

I will give you a couple of exceptions -- fission and fusion bombs -- no nitrogen there!

Answer 4

Explosives do contain a large percentage of nitrogen in their composition. The explosion is the release of the nitrogen gas.

Answer 5

no they do not,
lol