Explosive

Det Cord Christmas Tree
Came across this video the other day and at first I didn't think much of it. The first time you see it being set off it happens so fast that there is hardly anything to see, but then the slow motion replays start and, yes, you can see the Christmas tree shape.
    Detonation Cord is a plastic tube filled with a high explosive. Once you set off detonation cord, the explosion travels down the cord very quickly, faster than anything else on Earth except maybe electricity, light or thought. Much faster than a speeding bullet, faster than an ICBM. The speed of detonation is right up there with the orbital velocity of satellites, as in miles per second.
    I'm guessing RatedRR (the guy who made this video) used a couple of hundred feet of Det Cord in his Christmas Tree, so the whole thing blew in like one one-hundredth of a second (25,000 / 200 = 125). The first slow motion explosion takes 15 seconds of video time, and given a frame rate of 24 frames per second, that means his camera was operating at 45,000 (125 * 24 * 15) frames per second. You aren't going to find a camera capable of these kind of speeds at your local Target, at least not this week. Access to high explosives and super-high speed cameras kind of makes me think he has military grade connections.
    These high explosives are really very strange substances. You can do pert near anything you want to them, hit, cut, punch, shoot or burn and they will just lie there and take it. It takes a blasting cap or some other kind of high explosive to set them off. Very strange stuff indeed.