Typically, a receiver on the explosive triggers detonation when an electronic impulse is sent over a wire circuit or via wireless signal.
Ahmed D. Kafadar, an entrepreneurial engineer who led the development of the explosive triggers used in automobile air bags, died of a heart attack on Jan . 17
After years of taking in the lush scenery of Victoria, Canada, Smith began to translate the movement of trees and the chill of wind on his skin into explosive, triggering, beautiful works of art.
It is not, however, the source of a modern bomb's main explosive power, for just as the chemical explosives trigger a fission explosion by compressing the plutonium, that fission explosion is used to ignite the third stage, a still-larger fusion explosion, by compressing and heating the main part of the bomb.
They build improvised explosives triggered by a cell phone or garage opener, they blow up trains in Madrid and buses in London.
This includes tests of high-explosive triggers useful for nuclear weapons, and the redesign of a missile nose-cone to take what looks like a nuclear warhead.
The complexity of organizing five nearly simultaneous suicide bombings also contrasts with most of the past bombings, which have mainly involved single attacks involving remotely detonated bombs or explosives triggered by timing devices.
These 2-centimeter-long plastic tubes filled with explosives, triggered by electrical wires, delivered 10-millisecond bursts.
And securing this material should be every nation's top anti-terrorism priority: It takes only a grapefruit-sized slab of enriched uranium, shot into a slab of conventional explosive, to trigger a Hiroshima-sized bomb.
