[A rough, colored charcoal sketch of Zelda’s gentle hands, cupped around a small clay pot filled with sand. From its center, a delicate pepper sprout unfurls its first leaves, fragile, green, and full of quiet determination. It reaches upward, striving for life despite the harsh environment.]

I fell down a researching rabbit-hole today so here's my hc about how BotW bomb arrows work that nobody asked for.

From the inventory description: "The explosive powder packed into the tip ignites on impact, dealing massive damage to anything caught in the blast."

Armstrong's mixture is what's often used in party poppers to make them "pop", and is also how many household matches ignite. It is a powder that, like the inventory description calls for, goes 'splode when struck (using highly technical terms here because I am not a chemist and am therefore probably wrong).

Gun cotton (nitrocellulose, also called flash cotton) is cotton that has been chemically altered to be even more 'splody than gunpowder. Shape aside, it's light-weight enough to not alter an arrow's trajectory much in flight (I think). Lots of it compacted together makes a bigger boom (and might even detonate given the right circumstances, idk). Seriously this stuff used to be used in mining operations irl and can blast small boulders apart.

These guys used gun cotton in party poppers, which shows that Armstrong's mixture can and will ignite gun cotton in giant fiery explosions like we see the bomb arrows do in BotW. The fuse is entirely unnecessary in this arrangement and does absolutely nothing. It doesn't ignite the highly flammable gun cotton no matter how long Link twiddles his thumbs. It's only there as a visual reminder to the player that, "Hey! You're using BOMB ARROWS, remember???"

Prompt 8 WEAPON

SOMEONE PLEASE STOP THIS LITTLE ENGINEER.