Category: mapping

Nuclear testing is a controversial practice historically undertaken by nine countries around the world: Russia, the US, China, France, the UK, Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Israel. Just five of these countries have deployed 93 of the most potent bomb tests — exceeding the equivalent of 1.4 megatons of TNT each.

So, let’s delve into these bomb tests’ yields, deployment methods, and when they took place.

View Most powerful nuclear weapons tests in a full screen map

Yields of the Most Powerful Bomb Tests

We can’t discuss bomb testing without exploring the most formidable explosions. In this, the 93 tests range from 1 to 50 megatons. Yet only ten have had yields above ten megatons, which we’ll highlight now.

Name or Number	Country	Yield (megatons)
Tsar Bomba, Test #130	Soviet Union	50
Test #219	Soviet Union	24.2
Test #147	Soviet Union	21.1
Test #174	Soviet Union	20
Test #173	Soviet Union	19.1
Castle Bravo	USA	15
Castle Yankee	USA	13.5
Test #123	Soviet Union	12.5
Castle Romeo	USA	11
Ivy Mike	USA	10.4

Only the Soviet Union and the US are among the top 10 most powerful bomb tests. Also called Test #130, the Tsar Bomba stands out as the most potent, with a staggering yield of 50 megatons, making it the most powerful nuclear explosion in history. The Soviet Union tested it in 1961 at Novaya Zemlya. Following this are four additional significant Soviet tests, including Test #219 with a yield of 24.2 megatons and Test #147 with 21.1 megatons—all also tested at Novaya Zemlya.

The US has also conducted significant tests, with the 1954 Castle Bravo registering a yield of 15 megatons at Bikini Atoll, marking it as the most powerful American test. It’s worth noting that most of these tests involve air drops, so let’s take a closer look at deployment methods next.

How the Most Powerful Bomb Tests Were Deployed

From conventional air drops to cutting-edge missile warheads, the spectrum of testing types is broad:

• Air drop: 40 bomb tests
• Barge: 13
• Underground shaft: 9
• Tunnel: 7
• Parachuted: 6
• High alt rocket: 5
• Space rocket: 3
• Ground: 2
• Free air drop: 2
• Dry surface: 2
• Balloon: 2
• Parachute air drop: 1
• Missile warhead: 1

The majority of tests were through air drops (40), 75% of which were conducted by the Soviet Union. Air drops were also the most popular (4) among the 10 most powerful tests.

Barge tests (13) and underground shaft tests (9) were also notable as were tunnel (7) and parachute (6) tests. Check out the rest of the deployment methods on the map because we’re moving on to the years of these tests.

The 24-Year Span of the Most Powerful Tests

The end of nuclear bomb testing came on August 5, 1963, when the US, UK, and Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty.

Before the parties came to the table, the world saw 24 years of nuclear bomb tests, from 1952 to 1976. The most active years included 1962, during which 27 bomb tests were deployed. Of those, 17 tests were conducted by the Soviet Union, all at Novaya Zemlya, while 10 were from the US, albeit at multiple test sites (including at Kiritimati and Johnston Atoll).

Other notable years during this testing era included 1958 (15 tests), 1961 (11), and 1956 and 1968 (6 each).

You can also check out Locations of Nuclear Weapons in the United States and Worldwide on the BatchGeo blog.

If you own a business or your job has anything to do with sales, you likely have all sorts of information about your customers or leads. But are you making the most of this data?

If you store this information in Excel or another tool that can export a CSV file, you may be overlooking key metrics that could help improve your company, such as dates. For example:

• First purchase date
• Last purchase date

You can make more of the data you have by going from this…

…to this!

When you separate dates in Excel, you can sort your data by year, month, and day, making it easier to find patterns. You can also use Excel to compare dates, determining the duration of the engagement you’re measuring.

We used the following tips to split data of the birthdates and tenures of 115 US Supreme Court Justices, which is why the customer names in our examples may sound familiar. So, let’s get started with Excel’s formulas and features.

Split Dates into Sortable Days, Months, and Years

Say you have a cell that contains year, month, and day — this may not be the best format if you’re trying to isolate the most common months.

There are many ways of separating dates into unique columns in Excel, but perhaps the easiest is using “Text to Column.” Google Sheets has a similar feature. Here’s how to do it in Excel:

• Select the cells you’d like to separate.
• Navigate to the “Data” tab.
• Select “Text to Columns…”.
• Choose whether your data is currently separated by Delimited characters such as commas or colons or Fixed width with spaces between each field (we usually opt for the first).
• Click “Next” and either check off the delimiters your data contains (tabs, semicolons, commas, spaces, or you can customize any other delimiter, such as backspaces or hyphens) or set the column breaks.
• Select “Next” and choose where you want your separated data to end up.
• Click “Finish,” and you’re done!

Now that you’ve separated days from months and years, you can sort the individual columns or use pivot tables to count and summarize. You can also use an Excel formula to compare dates.

Calculate the Time Between Two Dates

You have two dates split into individual columns in Excel. Some data analysis requires you to calculate how many years, months, or days are between them. Below is the simple Excel formula that allows you to do this:

=DATEDIF(Start_date, End_date, Unit)

• In a new column, start by typing “=DATEDIF(“
• Follow up by either clicking the cell with your start date or typing in its corresponding letter and number (i.e., D2) followed by a comma.
• Now, click your end date or enter it in (i.e., E2), again followed by a comma.
• Next, in quotations, specify whether you want the time between the two dates to be in days, months, years, or some combination.
• “d” is used for the difference in days
• “m” means the difference in complete months
• “y” is for the difference in complete years
• Close your parentheses.

Note: There are also ways to exclude data, such as:

• “md”: Difference in days, excludes months and years
• “ym” : Difference in months, excludes years
• “yd”: Difference in days, excludes years

For our purposes, we want only the years and days between our two dates so we used two formulas in two columns, “Years,” and “Days.”

=DATEDIF(D2,E2,“y”)

and

=DATEDIF(D2,E2,“yd”)

Drag it down all your rows, and you’ll automatically calculate the difference!

Map Your Data and Dates

With your data organized and some Excel math under your belt, let’s see how you can get the most out of your spreadsheet. Plotting your points on a custom map is the natural next step if your data contains locations, such as addresses, cities, or states.

There are quite a few ways to do this, from desktop GIS software like ArcGIS or a Google Maps API, as explained in Introduction to Map Making on the Web. But the easiest method is to use Batchgeo, a dedicated tool that geocodes your location data. Here’s how to make a map with our free geocoder:

• Open your spreadsheet.
• Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data.
• Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com.
• Click on the location data box with the example data, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your data.
• Ensure you have the proper location data columns by clicking “Validate and Set Options.”
• Select the proper location column from each dropdown.
• Click “Make Map” and watch as the geocoder performs its process.

Thanks to splitting our data and our date math, our map looks like this:

View Sales Data with Dates (After) in a full screen map

Otherwise, it would have looked something like this:

View Sales Data with Dates (Before) in a full screen map

Check out our other Excel tips to upgrade your spreadsheet game even further:

• How to Find Duplicates in Excel
• Excel Data Visualization Examples
• Simplify Complicated Data in Excel Spreadsheets

Or get mapping today for free at batchgeo.com.

What makes Google Sheets such a collaborator’s paradise? If you’re familiar with the web-based spreadsheet application, you know it enables users to create and edit files online while collaborating with others in real time.

Multiple users can simultaneously view and edit a spreadsheet, making it ideal for group projects, data collection, and analysis. This article will explore these collaborative properties and show how Google Sheets can hold and shape data that you can then use to create a map.

Google Sheets Was Created for Collaboration

What are the features that facilitate collaboration in Google Sheets? Let’s look into them.

Let’s say you’re assigned a group project on national flowers and trees. You might gather the data from Wikipedia (flowers and trees) and format the data for a map.

The following Google Sheets features will help you finish this assignment or similar tasks as painlessly as possible:

• Tracking edits and revision history
• Highlighted editor changes
• Permissions system

Tracking Edits and Revision History

Google Sheets automatically tracks changes made by each user in a shared document. The revision history feature provides a detailed log of all edits, including who made the changes, what changes were made, and when they were made. Users can review and revert to previous versions of the document, ensuring data integrity and accountability.

Highlighted Editor Changes

When multiple users edit a Google Sheet, each user is assigned a unique color and cursor. Changes made by each editor are highlighted in their respective colors, making it easy to identify who’s working on which parts of the spreadsheet in real time.

Permissions System

Google Sheets also offers a robust permissions system that allows document owners to control access and actions within the document. Owners can set permissions to specify who can view, edit, or comment on the document. This system ensures that sensitive data is protected, and that only authorized users can make changes.

With a better understanding of how to use Google Sheets collaboratively, we can move on to how to take your data and turn it into a map.

Map Your Google Sheet Data

View National flowers and trees in a full screen map

Spreadsheets are great tools for storing your data. Some even offer a few features that can help put your data into context (highlighting duplicates, creating pivot tables, etc.). Plus, we’ve just gone over how much Google Sheets excels at all things collaboration.

But when it comes to visualization, most spreadsheets, even Google Sheets, fall short. So, if you or anyone in your group is a visual learner, and your data contains location information like countries, states, or cities, consider moving the data into a custom map.

Here’s how to do it:

• Open the spreadsheet.
• Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) the data.
• Open a web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
• Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your data.
• Check you have the proper location data columns by clicking “Set Options”.
• Click “Map Your Data” and watch as the geocoder turns your data into geographic coordinates.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you can share the link with the rest of the group.

If anyone else wants to edit the data, they have to do so on the shared spreadsheet. However, BatchGeo Pro users can edit the map’s style, marker shape, colors, and more without using the same account.

Share Your Map with More Members

With your group’s data mapped, it’s time to learn how to make edits together. As we mentioned in the previous section, BatchGeo Pro users can edit a map with no need to share usernames or passwords.

To ensure the others can edit, you can right-click the map and select “Edit Map.” In the “Share” section, you can choose between “Public,” “Unlisted,” or “My Subscription Users.”

• Public: Anyone can discover your map through search or on our site
• Unlisted: Only those with the unguessable URL can access your map, which will not be searchable or listed on our site
• Your Subscription Users (Pro): Up to 10 users can access your map (best for collaboration)

You can also opt to “Password Protect” your map right below the “Share” options. This way, your account will have direct access when logged in, while other users will need to enter a password to see the map.

Continue the collaboration with BatchGeo or BatchGeo Pro!