[X] My Assistant

[Bob Shaw]

I think you mean George Goble.  His official Purdue page was removed, for some reason

9 MB MPEG here
Has more on his site -

And not that I have anything against exploding whales, to be on topic they should be doing so upon launch or reentry, and perhaps with a bowl of petunias?

EDITED to fix movie link

That man is famous - he got an igNoble for Stupid Chemistry!

On his site, he describes LOX as 'light blue, like the sky' and 'slightly magnetic'. These are news to me...

Bob Shaw

[Bill Harris]

Amazing... I would have expected him to have gotten a Darwin Award long ago. _Gallons_ of LOX?

--Bill

[lyford]

Well, maybe not the Darwin Award, but he seems to have attracted the local fire department's attention:

Two years after the act, the local fire dept was not very happy with the fact, after seeing this web page. They now consider it "use of explosives", therefore I am not lighting any more grills.

He needs to get a house out in the desert somewhere to continue his "research."

[Bill Harris]

Yep, I do imagine that his experimentation was met with uneven enthusiasm by the local authorities.

When I was a budding mad scientist as a young teen I made a plasma torch of a 110VAC carbon arc lamp and used freon as the gas. Did it once and only once.

--Bill

[ljk4-1]

Slightly OT but marginally related:  Have you guys heard of Punkin Chunkin?  It's an annual event to (1) drink a lot of beer and (2) test devices that can throw/shoot pumpkins horrendously long distances.  This year's winner lobbed a pumpkin over 4,300 feet (that's more than 1.3 km to you dimensionally-challenged Europeans).

Check out Punkin Chunkin.  There are free videos from the 2004 competition at the bottom of the Gallery page.

Did you notice that most of these people are young, single males with lots of time on their hands who enjoy blowing things up? Terrorist recruits seem to run in similar categories.

[tfisher]

When I was a budding mad scientist as a young teen I made a plasma torch of a 110VAC carbon arc lamp and used freon as the gas.  Did it once and only once.

--Bill

Do you still have eyebrows?

[Bob Shaw]

Did you notice that most of these people are young, single males with lots of time on their hands who enjoy blowing things up?  Terrorist recruits seem to run in similar categories.

It's the guys that *don't* drink the bheer that we have to worry about - the drunken sort are more of a risk to themselves than to the rest of us.

A Modest Proposal: *FREE* and *LEGAL* Terrorist Training Camps - Inebriation Compulsory, Explosives *FREE*!

(ducks and runs, this time because something just went BANGaaaarghWHOOSH!)

Bob Shaw

[tasp]

I tried to burn sodium nitrate indoors.

Once.


I succeeded in setting a rug on fire. The NaNO3 melted through the aluminum container I thought would contain the 'reactants'.

[Toma B]

I tried to burn sodium nitrate indoors.
I succeeded in setting a rug on fire.  The NaNO3 melted through the aluminum container I thought would contain the 'reactants'.

That's it?!?
I have expected more from a guy that have that "Radioactivity danger" avatar


Once I poured half bucket of "fuel oil" on to the big pile of still shining furnace ash...
WHY???
It was dark and I thought it was water....WWWHHHHAAAAUUUUUSSSSHHHH!!!!!...
Boy, was I surprised when FIRE WALL (instead of steam) appeared of 4-5 meters high up in front of me...ARGH!!!

[tasp]

That's it?!?
I have expected more from a guy that have that "Radioactivity danger" avatar        


Once I poured half bucket of "fuel oil" on to the big pile of still shining furnace ash...
WHY???
It was dark and I thought it was water....WWWHHHHAAAAUUUUUSSSSHHHH!!!!!...
Boy, was I surprised when FIRE WALL (instead of steam) appeared of 4-5 meters high up in front of me...ARGH!!!

Well, that was one of the scariest things I did indoors.

I burned the backyard off a few times, and a cornfield once . . . .

And there was the steel manhole cover incident . . . .

We won't go into the oven cleaner and bleach poison gas 'learning' experience.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Me, at several occasion I used sodium chlorate and sugar to make little rockets. Some exploded, some went well.

But today sodium chlorate is forbidden, as it was used in some terrorist attacks.

Bloody Ben Laden and company, why they don't like children playing.

[Phil Stooke]

I thought 'blowed up real good' referred to Bob Shaw's posting record.

Phil

[tty]

Me, at several occasion I used sodium chlorate and sugar to make little rockets. Some exploded, some went well.

But today sodium chlorate is forbidden, as it was used in some terrorist attacks.

Bloody Ben Laden and company, why they don't like children playing.

I tried sodium chlorate and sugar too, once. The stuff is too unstable to be safe.

It was fairly widely used as a weedkiller back in the 60's and I once heard a story about a boy who walked over a meadow treated with the stuff on his way to a soccer match. It had been raining and his shoes and stockings got wet. Halfway through the match they had dried out and one of his shoes exploded! I don't know if it's true, but it might well be, practically any organic compound mixed with sodium chlorate becomes explosive.

tty

[deglr6328]

?? really? I used to mix it w/sugar all the time when I was a kid and never had a problem. It always burned very smoothly and cleanly no matter the ratio. It certainly never detonated. I wouldn't even describe it as a deflagration, just a rapid burn really. (like this) (and provided of course that you dont confine the reaction in any way to cause an explosion from the buildup of hot gasses). It always behaved very predictably and stably for me. perhaps I was using sodium chlorITE?

[edstrick]

I had a pint-plus jar of potassium chlorate when I was a kid. Left over photochemicals from when my dad was doing photography when he was in college and afterwards.

I tried making pseudo-estes rocket engines with it and sugar, rolling adding machine tape with a thin glue layer (there's an obsolete product) on a cylinder, and then packing it with chlorate. Plaster of Paris plugs in both ends, one with a hole. They'd hiss and try to move, then blow up, not violently enough to be worth it as home made firecrackers.

I got lazily inventive and ended up flying single-stage Estes rocket engines.

No rocket. Just the engine.

Hot-melt glue a 2 foot thin wooden dowel to the engine. and a 2 inch plastic soda straw beside it. Fill the top cavity with chlorate and sugar, then cap it with a 1/3 inch plaster of paris plug. Pack a little chlorate and sugar in the engine-hole. Slide it onto the launch rail and light the sucker with a MATCH!...

hiss-fizzle..... SWOOOOSH!...... ...... ..... *BANG!*

better than any bottle rocket you can buy in Texas.