Moscow Airport Bombing

[Swatopluk]

My father told a horror story from his youth when some boys peed into a can of carbide. Self-ignition occured. That reminds me of the news story of the man who peed against a metal fence the moment that lighning struck it.

[Aggie]

When I was a kid we occasionally built a small fire well away from anywhere and put a full can of gas lighter fuel on.  Sometimes they'd just split and whoosh, but mostly they made a huge, satisfying bang. 

Handful of .22 shells in the fire - sounds like popcorn.

I've heard stories that a can of beans makes quite a bang if left long enough. 

I shan't repeat some of what we got up to, but it was always well away from anyone.  Pyro, yes - vandal, no.

[Sibling DavidH]

My father told a horror story from his youth when some boys peed into a can of carbide.

In my potholing days we actually used carbide for our helmet lamps.  We got up to many a trick with it.  The best was when we put carbide in a gravelly stream and persuaded this Welsh farmer he had natural gas on his land.  We lit the bubbles - really had him fooled.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Wow.

I guess my days of burying glass coke bottles in the sand, then dropping firecrackers down the neck until you could lift a clear ring of glass out of the sand... if it worked.  Most of the time, it just broke.

Once, we filled an empty CO2 cartridge (a small thing, about 2-3 inches long or so) with match-heads from paper matches.  Then positioned it in a pipe, and lit a fuse salvaged from a firecracker.  And ran like heck....

... it actually launched and flew, instead of just blowing the heck up.  As an adult, I shudder to think if it had-- the pipe would've blown, too-- the shrapnel would've probably killed someone, even at our "safe" distance.

The coolest thing we did, though, was make hydrogen balloons from glass coke bottles.  Put acid of some sort (battery acid is usually what we could get easily) and some metal inside.  Stretch a balloon over the neck, and wait.  The acid would eat the metal, and release hydrogen gas.   

When the balloon was full, tie off the neck, then tape a longish fuse to the side.  Light the fuse, and release balloon.  It'd rise quickly, then *pop* in a satisfying explosion of hydrogen.  Best visuals at night-- in the day, it's all but invisible.  But satisfyingly loud.

Then there was the year of building cheap plastic models of cars and/or ships with firecrackers trapped inside.... then blowing the whole in a satisfying explosion of plastic shards.  One ship, I managed to gather up the majority of pieces, and re-glue them together, and blow it a second time.  And a third-- but by that time, large swaths of hull were replaced by glue-saturated cardboard...

Those were some care-free days.

Nowadays?  The kids would've been arrested for violating some Homeland Security edict or other...

.... bah.

[Swatopluk]

Looks like we have turned this into pyromaniacs not-so-anonymous

[Aggie]

Once, we filled an empty CO2 cartridge (a small thing, about 2-3 inches long or so) with match-heads from paper matches.  Then positioned it in a pipe, and lit a fuse salvaged from a firecracker.  And ran like heck....

... it actually launched and flew, instead of just blowing the heck up.  As an adult, I shudder to think if it had-- the pipe would've blown, too-- the shrapnel would've probably killed someone, even at our "safe" distance.

Not sure if the pipe would have blown from that - 'cratermakers' will do a heck of a job on a pumpkin, though.  I won't specify what the preferred propellant is.  As for the shrapnel from those things, I know people who've been hit by it - one buddy used to use similarly salvaged fireworks fuse and would just light one then yell 'RUN!'; he got walloped, luckily with a broadside strike of some rather jagged shrapnel.  I always insisted on a good 30-seconds worth of blasting wick and got behind a barrier.   Or you let a model rocket engine do the running for you...  

The coolest thing we did, though, was make hydrogen balloons from glass coke bottles.  Put acid of some sort (battery acid is usually what we could get easily) and some metal inside.  Stretch a balloon over the neck, and wait.  The acid would eat the metal, and release hydrogen gas.  

When the balloon was full, tie off the neck, then tape a longish fuse to the side.  Light the fuse, and release balloon.  It'd rise quickly, then *pop* in a satisfying explosion of hydrogen.  Best visuals at night-- in the day, it's all but invisible.  But satisfyingly loud.

Just as hazardous but easier to get your hands on is lye and aluminum foil.  I've always wanted to send some of these up at night with a long, waxed (and lit) cotton string attached to cause fireballs in the sky.  Never got around to trying it.

Maybe we should split and bury this thread...

[Sibling DavidH]

A lad in my home village used to get hold of potassium nitrate and soak sheets of newspaper in a saturated solution.  Once the paper was dry he would ram it into light aluminium tubing from old TV aerials.  These rockets would go well out of sight, except the ones which exploded on launching.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

That's cool, DavidH...  I never heard of either that propellant or the idea for light tubing.  Alas, those aerials are a vanishing species these days.

Aggie:

The explosion of a hydrogen balloon is all but transparent--- hydrogen flame is all but invisible.   We used to do the test-tube "pop" all the time-- you put water with a pinch of salt into a test-tube.  Insert two wires.  Hook to a battery.  Let the whole run inverted in a water-bowl, until the tube was full of oxy-hydrogen mix.   Remove wires.  Finger on tube. 

Take out, get match ready-- remove finger and *pop* it does a nice little explosion-- but unless the room is dark, you cannot see it.

I never did a hydrogen balloon in the dark-- I may have to do that this summer.