Impossible to find, incredibly dangerous, and illegal to transport? Gotta love nitroglycerin. 🤠💥 Join Adam Savage for an explosive experiment with this staple of old Western movies...and real-life disasters. #SavageBuilds #science | Science Channel

In 1862, the only dependable explosive was gunpowder. A recently discovered liquid compound, nitroglycerin, was a much more powerful explosive, but it was so unstable that it could not be handled safely. Undeterred, Nobel built a small factory to manufacture and research nitroglycerin. He discovered that mixing the compound with a porous rock called kieselguhr left nitroglycerin dry and granular, meaning it could be easily packaged and transported in cartridges. Nobel named the new product dynam