Page "Entropic explosion" Paragraph 3

* Israeli Invention Detects TATP Explosives " To our great surprise ,” PET ’ s inventor, Prof. Ehud Keinan, Dean of the Technion's Faculty of Chemistry, wrote in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, “ we discovered that TATP is very different from all other conventional explosives in that it does not release heat during the explosion.

It explodes by rapid decomposition of every solid-state molecule to four gas-phase molecules.

This rare phenomenon, scientifically known as ' Entropic Explosion ', is reminiscent of the rapid reaction that produces gas in the safety air-bags of cars during accidents.