What caused the Hindenburg explosion :: essays research papers

     The Hindenburg was a luxury airship, from nazi Germany. This "Titanic of the skies" (no pun intended) was destroyed by a flash fire in 1937 while landing in New Jersey after making its 10th transatlantic crossing. Thirty-five of the 97 batch aboard and one ground crew member were killed when the blimp burst into flames and was rapidly consumed by the fire.      The Hindenburg was filled with atomic number 1 swash which is lighter than air. The fumble was stored in sixteen large gas cells inside the ship. Like all gases, hydrogen expands when heated. If the hydrogen gas in the Hindenburg were to overheat, the gas could expand enough to burst the gas cells and send the ship plummeting to earth. The Hindenburgs engineers knew about this potential danger and came up with a solution to the problem they painted the surface of the airship with a chemical "doping step up" that contained powdered aluminum and iron oxide. This compound was chosen because it did a good job of reflecting the rays of the sun, therefore ensuring that the gas cells inside the ship would not overheat.           There begin been three main theories as to what happened to cause such a disaster. The official story has always been that the Hindenburg disaster was caused by the ignition of the flammable hydrogen gas used to lift the zeppelin. This has been over and over proven to be incorrect because witnesses of the explosion proclaim that it was like a fire works display, ummm... hydrogen burn without color.... Even pictures depicting the explosion show that the blaze from it contains pigment      The second theory is that the cause of the explosion was an electrical conductor. The doping compound that was used to prevent the hydrogen from heating up was extremely flammable. On the night before the Hindenburg was landing their was an electrical storm, and the surface of the ship became electrically charged. Engineers had already planned for this however, they attached slipperiness lines, ropes, that would go down to the ground and take the static charge to the ground with them as the ship landed. There were, however, panels that remained charged. Eventually, this built-up electricity inside the remaining panels took the form of a spark. Since the charged panels were covered with the doping compounds highly reactive metal powders, this spark caused them to ignite and burn very rapidly.