12.6.20 A Total Whitewash

Good morning everybody and we thought we'd finish another week in the School of Daddy with a practical science investigation. One of the many useful safety precautions we learnt about from the Protect and Survive booklet yesterday was to "coat windows inside with a diluted emulsion paint of a light colour so that they will reflect away much of the heat flash, even if the blast which will follow is to shatter them". Here we see Harry about to apply the paint to our test window while Katie readies our heat projector - a flame thrower improvised from a pressure washer and fuel supply. Obviously we won't be able to reach the temperatures generated by even a 1 megaton bomb - some twenty million degrees at the centre of the fireball (equivalent to the temperature of our sun) and even at 2 miles from the epicentre of the detonation, temperatures reach 4000 degrees C - enough to set trees alight and boil shallow lakes dry. However, Harry has selflessly offered to place himself in the test area, behind the window, and report back to us his estimates of the heat reaching through the protective layer of paint. Should we have sufficient fuel to prepare a small explosive device we will conduct further tests on the resistance of regular clothing to flying glass debris.