Not to rub it in, but this is one of those cases where a bit of intuition will get you a lot further than a calculation. Is it plausible that a 2 ton vehicle tr

Not to rub it in, but this is one of those cases where a bit of intuition will get you a lot further than a calculation. Is it plausible that a 2 ton vehicle travelling at 40 mph is equivalent to 70 kg of TNT? Think about the damage done by a crashing minivan. Enough to bend some metal, maybe even knock down a small brick wall. But a 70 kg TNT bomb would easily blow the car into many pieces. Alternatively, how much fuel does it take to accelerate your van from a standstill to 40 mph? A tiny fraction of a litre, which is why you could do it hundreds of times on a tank of gas. Is that tiny fraction of a litre of gasoline going to be energetically equivalent to 70 kg of TNT?