PopSci presents 'the labs that go boom'

Aspiring chemists and physicists usually enter the field with an ambition to blow things up, and to honour that, PopSci.com has recently compiled a list of laboratories that make things 'go boom'.

The first lab to feature is the Propulsion Research Centre at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, located only a few miles from NASA’s

Marshall Space Flight Centre. Researchers at the facility make rockets that launch payloads into orbit, as well as recently starting work on new nuclear propulsion systems that could reach Mars in weeks instead of months.

Harvard's Shock Compression Laboratory is the next to feature, which is home to a bright blue blast tank in which lab workers simulate some of the biggest booms in the cosmos: the collision of celestial objects. With quarter-pound projectiles up to 6,000 miles per hour, the laboratory equipment will help scientists understand how objects such as moons formed in the distant past.

The Centre of Excellence for Explosives, Mitigation and Response at the University of Rhode Island is next on the list, which offers the most diverse explosives curriculum in the US. Most students at the facility will go on to jobs on the front lines in the fight against criminals and terrorists, and their day to day research involves building explosives and then testing their new detection methods and blowing up devices to

study what happens during and after a blast.

One research lab which has immediate applications is the Trauma Mechanics Research Initiative at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. With around one fifth of wounded US soldiers evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan returning with traumatic brain injuries, many of which were the result of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the researchers are using a piston driven by compressed helium to better understand how shock waves from IEDs affect the body and brain.

There are several other research facilities making a blast at PopSci.com, and for aspiring scientists, or even those who simply like a good explosion, it makes a really good read.