Explosives Camp at Missouri S&T kicked off Monday with 20 area high school students getting an up close and personal view of the power of explosives.

“There is no such thing as a safe explosive,” Dr. Paul Worsey, a professor of mining engineering at S&T and the camp’s director, told the first week’s group on Monday.

Billed as the only camp of its kind, students had to qualify to be in the camp by writing an essay, submitting a resume and a recommendation from at least one teacher.

They will spend the week learning the tools of the trade, including how to prime and shoot dynamite, safety precautions, where explosives are used, and what careers are available in the field.

To start things off, kids got a pyrotechnic demonstration including a wall of fire and an exploding chicken.

“We used a chicken since it has a similar bone structure to a hand and to show the kids that when we are handling explosives they can be powerful,” Andy Careaga, director of public relations at S&T, said.

The demonstrations are being held at S&T’s Experimental Mine Facility, a secluded facility off of Bridge School Road.

In between demonstrations, kids where given a detailed presentation on part of the science of explosions.

“I am checking out as many engineering fields as I can,” Mark Giessinger, 17, said of why he was at the camp.

Worsey, the co-host of the Discovery Channel’s “The Detonators,” discussed how explosions happen and how they can be manipulated.

For instance, the bigger the diameter of an explosive the faster it shoots out. Or the more density to an explosive, the more powerful. Or that explosives have a shelf life and professionals need to understand that fact.

It wasn’t all serious talk about the business of explosions, there was time for some digressions on Wosery’s part.

Wosery told students a about back in the wild west, billiard balls use to be coated with celluloid, the first industrial plastic.

The problem with celluloid is that it is a volatile compound, that would explode during production. Worsey told the students about an urban legend of billiard balls exploding while in use, causing fights to break out since people would assume it was gunfire.

“A lot of people were killed in the wild west because of exploding billiard balls,” Worsey said.

The culmination of the camp will be a fireworks display put on by the students on the S&T campus at the end of every session.