Creating a plasma ball in a microwave

[flanajb]

This in a great one for all of you who enjoy science. I have not tried it, but will give it a go later

http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Homemad ... owave_Oven

 

[Eric The Viking]

It's worth pointing out you may smoke the magnetron.

Magnetrons, incidentally, usually contain beryllium, which is an insidious and highly toxic metal (I don't think there is any cure for Beryllium poisoning and it's absorbed through the skin, IIRC).

If you do damage it, don't be tempted to take the Magnetron apart!

E.

PS: If you knew all that already, my apologies.

 

[jimi43]

Geeeeesus!

All these crazy kids driving their parents mad blowing up their microwaves!

In my day we only blew the back off the garden shed with weedkiller and sugar...in an empty Gaz cylinder!

Much safer!

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

I particularly like "Please get permission before set fire to anything inside your house"

Priceless!

Jim

 

[Sheffield Tony]

In my day we only blew the back off the garden shed with weedkiller and sugar...in an empty Gaz cylinder!

Ahh, those were the days. They don't make weedkiller like they used to these days

 

[Steve Maskery]

Magicians use something called flashpaper. It's tissue paper impregnated with sodium chlorate (or similar) and it burns very, very quickly. In a flash, actually.
So I decided to make a batch. Tissue paper was easy to find, as was weedkiller. Dip the paper in a saturated solution and hang it up to dry. In my case over the boiler.

How I didn't blow the house up, I don't know. Of course, mum and dad had no idea what I was doing. But, astonishingly, I'm still here tot tell the tale.

Kids, eh?

 

[Eric The Viking]

You get a really good reaction too if you dip charred toast in sodium chlorate, then focus the sun on it once it's dry.

I (just happen to) have an small searchlight mirror (kicking about). It's capable of making 3x2 burst into flames in the best summer weather, so the effect on soaked toast is predictable :shock: I used it for a children's talk at church once (but saved that bit until after the service).

"Vicar! Johnny ran home screaming again from Sunday School. He's blubbering something about explosions. What was going on?"

Not quite, to be truthful, but one can but dream...

E.

 

[Racers]

We used to mix sodium chlorate and sugar, seal it in a short length of copper pipe, and chuck it into a bonfire and RLF (run like f@&k)

Pete

 

[tekno.mage]

Think I'll keep my spare microwave for wood drying - I've a feeling a lot of cheap modern ones would not survive this experiment (a catering one might be better)

It wasn't just the boys who made things go bang as kids - I made explosives from weedkiller & sugar (and other things) went down down to a deserted bit of beach with the boys to blow things up (I was a better pracitical chenist than they were - mybangs always worked!) The other one I remember was filling an old pump up garden sprayer (the kind with the metal nozzle - this is important) with a small amount of petrol and lighting the spray to make really impressive fireballs - petrol's too expensive for kids to do that nowadays of course

Now I have a friend who's built a Tesla coil that generates real lightning bolts 12 foot long Maybe I never really grew up!

Kym

 

[Harbo]

Dangerous games - a friend of mine lost some fingers making some fireworks!

Rod

 

[houtslager]

When I lived in London, my mates and I made our own bombs and fireworks too oh joy those where the days.
We even made a home made bazooka :shock: - a bit of cast iron drain pipe, with a wooden handle fixed on, and we loaded it up with diverse rockets - both bought and self made.

Oh the screams we made with that oh deary me :twisted: - try it nowadays and we'd be arrested for being terrorists LOL !

as often said by others - those where the days - when men were men and the women were of stronger stuff :twisted:

K

 

[jimi43]

We built a cannon out of a Bunsen burner with a Jetex fuse (remember them)...some Swan Vesta matches carefully ground up...some homemade gunpowder and some lead.

Blew a socking great hole in the back of the shed wall...never did find that lead.

The crunch came for me and my mate Ken...when we made grenades out of weedkiller/sugar in small thick-walled cider bottles with screw caps and Jetex fuses...

They burn under water so we threw them in the local boating lake...made huge plumes of water until the parkey chased us away....nearly caught us too!

As you say Rod...blinkin' stupid really but then when teenage kids are given explosives demonstrations at school with the chemistry teacher visiting from the USA and a crazy loon called "Bomber Harris" who showed us how to make explosions with just water...I guess we were "encouraged"! :mrgreen:

Now...Fulminate of iodine.... :mrgreen:

Jim

 

[Kalimna]

You do, of course, realise that somewhere out in GCHQland that the interweb filters looking for trigger words will be going into overdrive with this thread

Adam

 

[RogerS]

Great thread. I carried out four experiments in my youth.

First up, a bit of copper tube, closed the end off with epoxy. Drilled a small hole for a .22 case to fit. Filled said .22 case with solder and drilled a small hole down the length of it and another to join with it at right angles. Epoxied case to the hole in the tube. Fitted the tube to a makeshift pistol. Jury-rigged a trigger to fire down onto a cap from a toy gun over the hole in the case to ignite the propellant in the tube. Said propellant being the gunpowder from two bangers (proper ones like wot they had in the '60's...not those woosy ones they have now). Tamped the gunpowder down. Wedged the bullet aka a pencil into the end. Aimed at a tree and fired. Have you ever seen the damage a dumdum pencil can do to foliage ? :shock:


Next, for bonfire night, like others made my own firework from sodium chlorate and sugar...but mixes up with some real gunpowder. Stuck it all down inside a large (and I mean large) cardboard tube. Cut holes all the way down the outside and inserted lots of bangers. Come the night, proudly took it down the garden and lit it. After the smoke had cleared, my old man said "You made that, didn't you?".


And then at my old school, I had a stint of three months as a lab tech prior to joining the BBC. My own domain. Chemicals. Library. Nitro-glycerine. Came back the next morning. "Nitro-glycerine..a heavy yellowish liquid". Gulp. Yup. Highly unstable. O.......k.....a...y. So I tried to ignite it. Put a tiny bit on a workbench and then naively got a 100gm weight which I taped to the end of a meter rule which itself was taped to another metre rule and then attempted to thwack the nitro-glycerine thinking that I could impart enough energy to ignite it. Fat chance. Pretty disappointing, really. Whenever I recount the tale I usually say that I poured it down the sink and ten minutes later, one of the manhole covers blew off. But that would be a fib


But, saving the worst bit until last as it proves you should never be a plonker with chemicals. Especially concentrated sulphuric acid and meths. Remember how to make di-nitrogen tetroxide (think that's the right one)? Nitric acid and meths. Exothermic reaction. Does nothing until suddenly it all happens, froths up yielding copious supplies of brown noxious gas? Well, decided one day to make some in the fume cupboard. One of those cupboards with a door that slides up and down. Mixed the nitric acid and meths together and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. Nada. Became convinced that the concentrated nitric acid wasn't that concentrated anymore having been used and re-used and was diluted with water. What likes water, I think? :idea: Concentrated sulphuric acid. Which I proceed to pour into my mixture. To this day, I think it must have been my guardian angel telling me to slam down that fume cupboard door because nano-seconds after I did that, the contents of the flask exploded blasting concentrated acid dripping down the inside of the glass window door. Could have been my face and eyes.

 

[RogerS]

You do, of course, realise that somewhere out in GCHQland that the interweb filters looking for trigger words will be going into overdrive with this thread

Adam

No, no, no, Adam. You're missing the keyword ECHELON. As in 'that Adam (Kalimna) isn't half a smart dude, Echelon, what with his degree in Islamic nuclear fission" :lol:

 

[Kalimna]

Ok Roger, how do 'Unthank' a post ?

Adam

 

[jimi43]

I would think that GCHQ has picked this up but I would suggest they have far too many other things to be dealing with at the moment than worry about old codgers reminiscing about the ill-spend days of their youth making explosives!

At least we weren't taking drugs like they do today...oh...no....wait a minute....I remember something about blotting paper...rotten rye grass and Jimi Hendrix....but it's all a blur now! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

And parties were much more fun after we met Justus von Liebig. :wink:

Jim

 

[houtslager]

ah memories - tried that one too

mixing conc. hydrochloric , glycerine over a basin full of cold water. thought is was a dud mix and silly us , we threw it out the window.
DOH ! blew a massive limb of the oak tree it hit !

laughed our ***** off and got caught by the chemistry master.

Banned for 6 months from the labs

K

 

[DrPhill]

mixing conc. hydrochloric , glycerine over a basin full of cold water. thought is was a dud mix and silly us , we threw it out the window........................................
Banned for 6 months from the labs
/quote]

Not suprised that you were banned. You should have used concentrated sulphuric/nitric acid mix. Definite fail on A-level bomb-making.

Tried much the same as the rest of you (did you know that you can use fractional crystalisation to separate the sodium chlorate from the fire-suppressant?). My favourite was nitogen tri-iodide.

Many really stupid and several spectacularly stupid stunts...... thankfully no injuries, and these days I would frown on yoof repeating them. (My own hypocrisy never bothers me).

I had not realised that my childhood interest in such things was so widly shared. We should have had a facebook page for it. Is this forum representetive of the population at large? Or does the kid that was attracted/motivated by home-made explosive grow up into the kind of adult that likes UK forum.....?

 

[jimi43]

Nitrogen Ti-Iodide aka Fulminate...great for dance floors. Use filter paper to pass the ammonia over the iodine crystals soaks the paper...cut up before it dries into small squares and leave all over dance floor at the school dance. Interesting jitterbug effect when it dries later that evening! :mrgreen:

Facebook page...yes...that should keep the listeners active! #-o

Actually I Googled "Fulminate" and there is plenty more on the Anarchists website to keep them busy for decades....so it would seem even given the current climate...the suppressants and all the safety measures known to mankind...the youth of today clearly hasn't changed!

I think you'll find that it is only common on this website because most teenagers of our generation eventually turn into less dangerous enterprises like..um...woodworking!!! :mrgreen:

Jim

 

[DrPhill]

Nitrogen Ti-Iodide aka Fulminate...

Technically not the same, but sufficiently similar for a cultural association. (NI3 versus Fulminate (CNO)). Yeah, geeky chemist, but it is what I did for a living for a decade and a bit.

Perhaps the common characteristic between interest in DIY and memories of childhood explosive escapades is that they both need awareness and management of risk.....