Terrell McCollum, age 7, of Huntsville, Ala., for his question:

What is TNT?

Andy must make one thing very plain before he gives any information on this bad tempered chemical. TNT is stuff that 7 yEar old boys should not handle. Later, if you study about it and learn how to control it, you could become an expert and use TNT to blow up all kinds of obstacles. But this chemical is a high explosive, and only adult experts have any business handling it.

TNT is its short name. Its long chemical name is trinitrotoluene, and you must agree that we certainly need a short form of such a long name. The booming mixture is made from a few simple chemical elements, none of which tends to blow up by itself. It is a chemical compound of the elements nitrogen and hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. But when these harmless elements are put together in a certain way, they form the high explosive compound called TNT.