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FoxMacLeod01 t1_iuekm0o wrote

Does the height of the resulting mushroom cloud actually scale linearly with the megatonnage of the bomb or is that just for the sake of a cute graph?

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Jupiter20 t1_iuf59oz wrote

For small bombs, the height of the mushroom cloud scales with the cube root of the explosion energy. It changes for larger bombs, because of stratospheric layers or something, those scale steeper, but still not linearly.

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RightBear t1_iuexaxk wrote

I think so. It's a little misleading, because we judge size by looking at the area, not the height.

Tsar Bomba had ~3x more energy than Castle Bravo, but the graphic gives it 3^2 times as much area.

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