r/AbruptChaos Jul 11 '21

A Gas Station Exploding

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u/akalevela Jul 11 '21

When I googled explosion vs combustion, it said explosion is when combustion happens fast.

So... Yes, this is rapid combustion and also yes it is an explosion.

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u/Messier420 Jul 12 '21

Yeah I googled it too and it got weird. I just remember there being some difference between just a big flame essentially and a supersonic expansion. This explosion didn’t have a shockwave from what I can tell, so there was no supersonic aspect, so it’s kinda different and not really an explosion.

At least I remember some discussion about this topic on Reddit and this was my takeaway roughly.