SYNOPSIS

Explosives is actually an essential part of our modern life. It is used to break rock in Quarries so that we can get aggregates for our roads, airport, housing and building construction, port, bridges and used in countless projects. With use of explosives we get minerals and metals, oil and gas, coal that provides the electricity that we need in our daily life. Explosives are also used in our annual Merdeka celebration to light our skies (fireworks) and we live with it daily in our cars (airbags). Explosives are sometimes used in medical treatment of heart. The fastest way to bring down old buildings is through the use of explosives.

There are so many uses of explosives in industry. The talk is to introduce the use of explosives that benefit our daily life and dispense the belief that explosives are used for destructive purposes only. It is also an introduction to futures course in explosives in civil, mining quarrying and other industries that are of interest to engineers by the technical division.

BIODATA OFSPEAKER

Ir. Hj. Look Keman graduated in 1979 in Mining Engineering from Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland and M.Sc (Explosives Ordnance Engineering) from Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, England in 1991. He served as a Research Engineer specialising in Geotechnical Engineering/Slope Engineering and later as Inspector of Mines serving in Perak, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan and Malacca with the former Mines Department from 1979-1996. As a Government Engineer he oversees Construction blasting work in Kuala Lumpur at SOGO, Starhill, Pudu, Damansara and Selangor. He had experience in the investigation of Firework Factory where 26 people were killed.in 1991. He was responsible for designing a firework magazine for Al Famosa. After retirement he work as Consulting Engineer specialising in Explosives and Blasting work and also rock breaking using non-explosives demolition agent.