From Derick Ovenall
It appears to me that James Tuck’s exploding Los Alamos bunker
(26 January, p 55)
is just one more demonstration that mixtures of methane and air are
explosive and can be detonated by a spark.
Didn’t Sir Humphrey Davey invent a miner’s lamp to avoid this very
possibility about two hundred years ago? When I grew up in the West Midlands in
the 1930s and 1940s, it was common knowledge that one should not go looking for
a gas leak with a lighted candle. Apparently this information had not reached
Los Alamos when Tuck carried out his experiment.
Wilmington, Delaware
