2025-09-21

[public] 1.64M views, 139K likes, dislikes audio only

Veritasium

Discover the explosive story of Alfred Nobel. Sponsored by Opera - Upgrade your browsing experience with Opera today. Download it right here: https://opr.as/Opera-browser-veritasium

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CORRECTIONS:

30:36 The molecular chain we showed here when talking about cellulose was actually starch, the glycosidic bonds should be bent (beta) not straight (alpha) bonds - Thank you to someriversong1793 for spotting this

37:38 The animation shows the casing flying away with the bullet, this is incorrect, only the bullet accelerates down the barrel like that - Thank you to kettusnuhveli for pointing this out

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A huge thank you to Jesse Taylor for making the demonstrations possible and sharing his experience with us!

And a big thanks to Dr. Katharine Tibbets, Dr. Julien Glorian & Sabrina DePiero for their expertise and participation in this video.

Also thanks to Steven Johnson, author of The Infernal Machine (as featured on 99% Invisible) and to Jonah Sachs and professor Terry Reynolds for their help on the project

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0:00 The Nobel Armament Factory

4:18 Gunpowder vs Nitroglycerine

10:58 How safe is nitroglycerin?

14:50 Blast Caps

19:09 Why does nitroglycerin explode on impact?

22:19 The invention of dynamite

26:56 Dynamite vs TNT

27:53 Explosive Cotton - Gelignite

32:43 The Merchant of Death

35:42 Smokeless Guns

38:04 The Birth of Terror

42:08 Why did Nobel start the prize?

43:11 What happened to Nobel?

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References: https://ve42.co/NobelRefs

Images & Video: https://ve42.co/NobelImRefs

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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:

Adam Foreman, Albert Wenger, Alex Porter, Alexander Tamas, Anton Ragin, Anupam Banerjee, armedtoe, Balkrishna Heroor, Bertrand Serlet, Blake Byers, Bruce, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, David Tseng, Evgeny Skvortsov, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, gpoly, Ibby Hadeed, Jeromy Johnson, Jon Jamison, Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Kyi, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Matthias Wrobel, Meekay, meg noah, Michael Bush, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Robert Oliveira, Sam Lutfi, Tj Steyn, Ubiquity Ventures, wolfee

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Writer, Director & Producer: Henry van Dyck

Presenters: Derek Muller & Henry van Dyck

Editor: Trenton Oliver

Camera Operators: Wesley Wright, Prescott McCarthy, Joel Schöppe & Henry van Dyck

Animators: Andrew Neet, Fabio Albertelli, Emma Wright, Rokas Viksraitis & Ivy Tello

Illustrators: Jakub Misiek, Maria Gusakovich, Nataly Zhuk, Isaac McRee, Grace Nemanic, Sofia Constantini & Veronika Pasynkova

Additional Editors: James Stuart & Spencer Wright

Researchers: Aakash Singh Bagga & Gabe Strong

Thumbnail Designers: Abdallah Rabah, Ren Hurley, Ben Powell & Henry van Dyck

Production Team: Josh Pitt, Nicola Griffiths, Rob Beasley Spence, Matthew Cavanagh, Anna Milkovic & Zoe Heron

Executive Producers: Casper Mebius & Derek Muller

Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images, The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Pond5 & StoryBlocks

Music from Epidemic Sound