Box

Box (plural boxes) describes a variety of containers and receptacles for permanent use as storage, or for temporary use, often for transporting contents.

Boxes may be made of durable materials such as wood or metal, or of corrugated fiberboard, paperboard, or other non-durable materials. The size may vary from very small (e.g., a matchbox) to the size of a large appliance. A corrugated box is a very common shipping container. When no specific shape is described, a box of rectangular cross-section with all sides flat may be expected, but a box may have a horizontal cross section that is square, elongated, round or oval; sloped or domed top surfaces, or non-vertical sides.

A decorative or storage box may be opened by raising, pulling, sliding or removing the lid, which may be hinged and/or fastened by a catch, clasp, or lock.

Packaging box

Several types of boxes are used in packaging and storage.

Bullet

A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, slingshot, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration. The word "bullet" is sometimes colloquially used to refer to ammunition in general, or to a cartridge, which is a combination of the bullet, case/shell, powder, and primer. This use of 'bullet', when 'cartridge' is intended, leads to confusion when the components of a cartridge are discussed or intended.

Bullets fired from slings, slingshots, and many airguns (including BB guns) travel well below the speed of sound (about 343 m/s or 1126 ft/s in dry air at 20 °C or 68 °F). Low-power handguns have muzzle velocities generally less than the speed of sound (subsonic), while bullets fired from high-power handguns (such as a .44 Magnum) and from rifles have an initial speed faster than the speed of sound, meaning they are supersonic and thus can travel a substantial distance and even hit a target before a nearby observer hears the "bang" of the shot. Bullet speed through air depends on a number of factors such as barometric pressure, humidity, air temperature, and wind speed.

Combustion

Combustion /kəmˈbʌs.tʃən/ or burning is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion in a fire produces a flame, and the heat produced can make combustion self-sustaining. Combustion is often a complicated sequence of elementary radical reactions. Solid fuels, such as wood, first undergo endothermic pyrolysis to produce gaseous fuels whose combustion then supplies the heat required to produce more of them. Combustion is often hot enough that light in the form of either glowing or a flame is produced. A simple example can be seen in the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen into water vapor, a reaction commonly used to fuel rocket engines. This reaction releases 242 kJ/mol of heat and reduces the enthalpy accordingly (at constant temperature and pressure):

Combustion of an organic fuel in air is always exothermic because the double bond in O₂ is much weaker than other double bonds or pairs of single bonds, and therefore the formation of the stronger bonds in the combustion products CO₂ and H₂O results in the release of energy. The bond energies in the fuel play only a minor role, since they are similar to those in the combustion products; e.g., the sum of the bond energies of CH₄ is nearly the same as that of CO₂. The heat of combustion is approximately -418 kJ per mole of O₂ used up in the combustion reaction, and can be estimated from the elemental composition of the fuel.