Well, it does create sodium hydroxide and hydrogen gas....
Like trying to scratch off the primer inside a blank with a needle ?
Hmmm, bad idea.
I use to fix 7.62mm or 4.10ga shells to the end of a field tip arrow. That was always a fun way to nullify boredom.
Take the shot out and fill the whole shell with powder and magnesium shavings swiped from chemistry lab, better effects.Back to stupid things we've done, I remember when I was 5, I thought it was pretty neet that I could use a paper clip to connect up a record player to the wall socket. This went swell until I shorted the wire between hot and neutral. The wire vaporized in my fingertips leaving a very deep burn. Hurt very much if I recall. Didn't do that again, lesson learned.
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We, know that SY is a real chemist, and the rest of us ARE amateurs. In spite of my amateur rank as a backyard chemist, I knew how to make big bangs, mega smoke clouds, and other anoying effects by a rather young age. 2 years in a special school for kids that "didn't fit in" surrounded by other malcontent kids teaches you well. Devious kids learn to play with Draino, brake fluid, pool chlorine, gasoline, styrofoam, model airplane fuel, sugar, sulfur, charcoal, sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate, match heads, and of course fireworks. Powder was fairly easy to get, just take apart a few bullets. Of course we played with bullets too. Do you know how big of a bang you can make by sticking a blasting cap into a 5 pound bag of flour?
Simple purely evil device...take a cherry bomb, roll it in play doh, then roll it in BB's, repeat until it is baseball sized, let it dry in the sun for a few days. DON'T be near it when it goes off.
More of lifes lessons.....Yes, I did them all.
#1 NEVER throw an ice cube in the fryolator!
#2 Never sharpen both ends of a wooden pencil, attach aligator clips and plug it into the wall outlet!
#3 Never attach the paddles of a defibrillator to a bananna turn it up to 400 Joules and hit the test button!
#4 Don't stick a firecracker fuse in the side of a shotgun shell, set it in the street facing upward and light it expecting the shot to go straight up. After picking a few pieces out of my backside, I invented the BB bomb above. I only made 1. It sat on my shelf for almost 2 years before it was used.
#5 Squeezing a .22 caliber bullet in a bench vise isn't too good of an idea either. Neither is setting one in the street and whacking it with a hammer!
#6 Pouring brake fluid on a pool chlorine tablet will make a rather toxic stink cloud and start a chemical fire that won't go out!
#7 Pouring a whole can of model airplane fuel and some gasoline on the lake and lighting it at midnight and yelling fire freaks out the neighbors who call the cops and fire department. How do you put out a burning lake? It was out before the FD got there.
#8 I am sure others made UFO's with dry cleaners bags and a flame source. We used 4 McDonalds straws to hold the bottom of the bag open. A small piece of aluminum foil held a bit of Sterno at the intersection of the straws. We launched them from a row boat in the middle of the lake. The warm water against the cool winter air provided a bit of extra lift. Sometimes they catch fire and come burning to the ground. The winter air can be dry in Florida, dry pine needles are highly flamable. A thick coating of pine needles on a neighboors roof will catch fire when a flaming UFO crashes there. We put it out with a garden hose. Fortunately the old geezer slept through the whole incident. He never noticed the black spot on his roof.
I recently saw some kids making a modern version. Place a glow stick inside a baloon and fill the baloon with helium. Place the glowing baloon inside a white trash bag, launch. No fire, cool blue or green glow over the Everglades. Yep, THERE HERE!
Nice to know I wasn't the only hellion kid out there. I was once called Rasputin by an old geezer that lived on my street. You have to earn that kind of respect.
More evil kid doings...... I was not always in it alone but I was usually the primary instigator. However, when something went KaBOOM, I always got the blame whether it was me or not.
1) I discovered that placing unoxidized pool clorine, used to shock the water if it turns green, in a soda can then pouring in an ouce or so of photochemically reactive terpentine would self ignite in about a minute and melt the can to a puddle of aluminum in seconds. I once used it as a time delay fuse to ignite a large brush pile soaked in gasoline. The heavy air blast traveled about 20 yards from center as indicated by the waving motion of the grass around it. The fire ball must have risen 50ft. It shook the nieghbors house and knocked his picture off the wall. I figured that the smoke from the Cl burning is something like mustard gas, which is outlawed in conventional warfare for it's cruelty, so I quit with that.
2) Used to make BB grenades too, but smaller and less powerful. They were used during our BB gun wars. At least we had the sense to wear goggles and multiple layers of clothing, especially underwear.
Those were fun days, sneaking through the woods hunting each other.
3) Made a very effective zip gun that fired small round screws, 50cal. Had it set up to fire using steel wool connected to a small transformer with long speaker wire/aligator clips and a power strip with a switch as the fuse.
4) Full CO2 cartrages for BB guns or small paintball guns will explode quite nicely if you take a soda can, cut the top off, then notch it so the cartrage set on it like a hot dog with the solder end hanging over the edge. Then place a flamable liquid inside and light. Get way the hell away though because in a few minuites the steel case will rupture and BOOM. It may have some travel on it so obviously this is a dangerous idea. I use to place it inside a large creek culvert so it would not injure anyone. Talk about rocking the neighborhood. The cool thing is when you pick up the steel case afterwards, it will be frozen. The irony here is I got the idea from the saftey warning label on the cartrage.
5) One time my friend set up a 12ga shell in a fence and shot at the primer with a BB gun until he finally hit it. I had a pretty good idea what was about to happen. The shell kicked back and drilled him right in the forehead. Funny as hell.....for the rest of us.
I'm sure my memory can squeeze out a few more childhood pranks.
Oh yeah, like writing in the neighbor's yard with clorine power. Works great and very readable after the first rain.
But I only did evil pranks to people who went out of their way to be A-holes.
Is it me or is this thread begining to look like the Anarchist Cookbook?
Wonder if Sy the Chemist will teach us how to make Picric acid? kidding of course
edit....just remembered another one, placing slices of bologna on someones car while it is sitting in the hot sun. The results will make you wonder about eating that stuff.
More evil kid doings...... I was not always in it alone but I was usually the primary instigator. However, when something went KaBOOM, I always got the blame whether it was me or not.
1) I discovered that placing unoxidized pool clorine, used to shock the water if it turns green, in a soda can then pouring in an ouce or so of photochemically reactive terpentine would self ignite in about a minute and melt the can to a puddle of aluminum in seconds. I once used it as a time delay fuse to ignite a large brush pile soaked in gasoline. The heavy air blast traveled about 20 yards from center as indicated by the waving motion of the grass around it. The fire ball must have risen 50ft.
It shook the nieghbors house and knocked his picture off the wall. I figured that the smoke from the Cl burning is something like mustard gas, which is outlawed in conventional warfare for it's cruelty, so I quit with that. 2) Used to make BB grenades too, but smaller and less powerful. They were used during our BB gun wars. At least we had the sense to wear goggles and multiple layers of clothing, especially underwear.
Those were fun days, sneaking through the woods hunting each other.3) Made a very effective zip gun that fired small round screws, 50cal. Had it set up to fire using steel wool connected to a small transformer with long speaker wire/aligator clips and a power strip with a switch as the fuse.
4) Full CO2 cartrages for BB guns or small paintball guns will explode quite nicely if you take a soda can, cut the top off, then notch it so the cartrage set on it like a hot dog with the solder end hanging over the edge. Then place a flamable liquid inside and light. Get way the hell away though because in a few minuites the steel case will rupture and BOOM. It may have some travel on it so obviously this is a dangerous idea. I use to place it inside a large creek culvert so it would not injure anyone. Talk about rocking the neighborhood. The cool thing is when you pick up the steel case afterwards, it will be frozen.
The irony here is I got the idea from the saftey warning label on the cartrage. 5) One time my friend set up a 12ga shell in a fence and shot at the primer with a BB gun until he finally hit it. I had a pretty good idea what was about to happen. The shell kicked back and drilled him right in the forehead. Funny as hell.....for the rest of us.
I'm sure my memory can squeeze out a few more childhood pranks.
Oh yeah, like writing in the neighbor's yard with clorine power. Works great and very readable after the first rain.
But I only did evil pranks to people who went out of their way to be A-holes.
Is it me or is this thread begining to look like the Anarchist Cookbook?
Wonder if Sy the Chemist will teach us how to make Picric acid? kidding of course
edit....just remembered another one, placing slices of bologna on someones car while it is sitting in the hot sun. The results will make you wonder about eating that stuff.
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That is still the case here. When something smokes or blows up, I hear about it.
When work used to be fun they would take an entire cell phone development division out for some type of "bonding and frustration relief" event. Full contact laser tag, or paintball games actually paid for by Motorola. Not anymore. Several years ago they took several hundred people out to the premier opening of a popular movie, they rented the entire theater. About halfway through the movie the power went off. Almost in unison I heard at least a dozen people say "where is Anderson".
I was assigned to solve a field reliability issue on a SCADA system that used underground wiring to operate relays and valves by radio control. It seems that lightning strikes as far as a mile away would blow up the system. I needed to simulate a lightning strike, so I got permission to buy an old defibrillator and bring it into work. After some experiments and design work, I had devised a method that would protect all terminals of the SCADA system from a full power blast from the defib between any two terminals. We had created a Lexan test box to protect us from exploding stuff and we demonstrated to management that connecting the defib to an old pager and pressing the button would blow the PC board inside the pager in half, but did not harm the SCADA system. The mods went into production and field issues vanished. End of story? NOOOOO. There were two of us that would "test" things after hours when there was no one around. Little 50 volt mylar caps sound like a .45 shot. I don't remember who got the brilliant idea to "test" a banana, or why we didn't put the lid on the test chamber, but both of us were there very late cleaning banana goo off of the ceiling and walls. The whole lab smelled like banana for a few days.
I worked in a TV repair shop when I was 16 and 17. My boss would plug nails into a hot dog, apply the wall outlet for a minute or two, then eat the hot dog. He showed me the sizzling pickle experiment.
I did a lot of devious stuff as a youngster, and still performed a few unexpected surprises well into adulthood, and even middle age. I played tricks, some of which didn't always go as planned. Even as a kid I never did things to intentionally hurt other people. That was NOT the case with a few of the social outcasts that were present in that "special school". One of the more evil kids got the idea to dump a whole carton of BB's down the stairs during class change at school. Several people got hurt bad enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. This was only 6th grade. I wonder where these kids are today?
OK, I did find a use for the BB bomb. It went to someone who earned its "testing" through several years of tormenting all of us "normal" kids about how much better than he was because he had rich parents. Parents who bought their kid a Mercedes Benz for his 16th birthday. After seeing the Benzer trashing my moms flower bed late one evening (for the 4th time), I fixed the problem.
I don't do to many outrageous stunts any more. I have lived in the same house for 32 years. The neighbors have grown to understand, and even expect a display of power on the 4th of July and New Years Eve. After 9-11 I was told by a local cop that the "serious infractions" that were previously overlooked on those two days would no longer be tolerated, and infact the detonation of "destructive devices" would subject a person to arrest. I have not made any more "firecrackers" since then. Shown below is a medium sized firecracker from July 4 2001.
I also used to retrieve electrical devices from the bulk trash disposal, "test" them, and return them. Microwave ovens were my favorite. This particular display was just as the Fast and Furious movie was popular, so I tried to make a spoof video about souping up a slow computer with nitrous oxide (NOS). Of course every hot rodder knows that NOS makes your car go faster, but can make it run hot, and even blow up. We stuffed an old computer full of fireworks and ran the NOS hose in through the back. The fireworks were lit and then the NOS was turned on. The bottle was nearly empty so there was only gas, no liquid. The resulting fireball blew the lid off the computer throwing lit firecrackers everywhere and messed up the video (too much smoke) but it was cool! I have no pictures of the event since I was too busy making the bang, and everybody else was either hiding or running. I have pictures of the aftermath.
I decided to make non explosive KaBOOM's one year using my compressor turned up to 120 PSI and some Gatorade bottles. They make a rather loud bang with no chemical reaction. This means that according to the law they are NOT a destructive device. The big half gallon bottles are rather loud. I had a rather heated discussion with an angry cop who "didn't care what the law said" it sounded like a bomb so it was a bomb. I finally promissed not to make any more, and he left. No more bangs here. Some of the neighbors are actually dissapointed.
The first picture shows a "firecracker"
The second picture shows the computer after NOS.
The third picture shows the morning of July 5. The computer is sitting behind the flag. The pictures from Jan 1 2000 show the whole yard covered in debris.
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I think he was just riding by when I rattled his car windows. He was already rather angry assuming by the KaBOOM that he had found some mad bomber. He must have assumed that he could get 10 brownie points for bringing in such an evil person. I went out the gate to fetch the fragmented bottle to find a rather angry cop already out of his cop car.
I had epoxied a quich disconnect air hose fitting into a bottle cap, attached it to a large Gatorade bottle, plugged on a 100 foot air hose, and set the whole thing on the fence. I was a safe distance away at the air compressor not knowing that a cop was driving down the street about 30 feet from the bottle. I plugged the air hose into the compressor which then pressurizes the bottle. About 10 seconds later KaBOOM!
We live in a neighborhood where the cops have been known to shoot first and make up a story later. A young kid was executed in his bed by our crack SWAT team. It is best not to **** these people off. Here are a few pictures taken from my front yard. 21 units including SWAT were called out to address a drunken redneck who beat up his wife and threatened to kill a her. The cops locked down the whole neighborhood arrested a couple who mouthed off to them because they were returning home with take out food and had left their young kids with neighbors.
Anyone who has taken a firearms safety course knows not to draw your gun unless you intend to use it, and never keep your finger on the trigger. I guess one of these cops wanted to execute his squad car.
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Maybe it wasn't sizzling much, it was 40 years ago. I was pretty grossed out by the guys hot dogs and the fact that he actually ate them. I have plugged a lot of stuff into the wall outlet, but I personally haven't plugged in a pickle.
I have attended the Miami hamfest for most of its 45 year run. For about 20 years I was a seller, usually with a group of people. We would pool our money and buy out an ailing business for real cheap. We fixed what we could and sold the left overs at the hamfest. Everything was clearly labled and properly represented. During the 80's and early 90's we dealt in computer parts. Our slogan was "get your memory for nothing and your chips for free!" Sounds familliar doesn't it. We got a zillion 41256 chips right before the artificially created ram shortage happened.
One of my associates decided that we needed a way to draw attention to our tables, so he started plugging stuff into the wall outlet. He had a cord with a wall plug on one end and alligator clips on the other end. He called it the chip tester. All IC's that it tested were bad. Then it became the board tester with the same results. Next it was the hard drive tester. It still hangs on the wall in his shop with the ends all burned black.
I have found that the reaction from the crowd usually falls into 3 categories with about an equal number in each category. 1) you guys are NUTS! 2) That was cool, do it again. 3) I'm calling the fire marshall.
I was yearbook photographer in my senior year. We had a strobe flash with the big power pack you carried on a shoulder strap. I was at home in the basement, trying to fix some broken wires on a connector. Being the smart kid that I was, I decided to discharge the capacitors before working on the unit. Not quite smart enough; I used a screwdriver. The result was a really loud bang, a really bright flash of light, and a melted screwdriver. Everyone came running down to see what happened. Blinded by the light, ears ringing from the noise, I tried my best to explain things. Lucky I wore glasses. Nowadays, I would use a 1 megohm resister. I didn't work on the unit again...
Lesson 1 Dont pack scraps of salvaged packaged explosives (watergel) into a crack in a tree trunk and expect to be safe 100m away. WRONG! large frighteningly fast pieces of tree will wizz excitingly in all directions for at least 300m ignoring smaller trees and bush to making a change of underpants necessary.
2. Dont sniff unlabeled bottles of "stuff" you find in the laundry, they may turn out to contain a strong solution of ammonia that leaves you flat on your back, covered in a noxious smelling liquid wondering what day it is.
3. Dont sneak out at night to the local supermarket carpark with a tin of 'flashpowder' (zinc dust and sulphur) and stare at the ensuing flash as it makes it very easy for the police to ID the "perps'. They are the ones staggering around blindly bumping into one another.
4. Dont try to light a cigarette with the muzzle flash of a rifle. Even if it is only a .303 blank round it will result in that movie "suprised" look, complete with burnt fringe, ringing ears and decimated fag.
5. Getting shot with an air rifle hurts, really hurts! Boy howdy it smarts even when youre drunk and have an extra pair of jeans on as 'protection'.
I could go on for hours but have to work
2. Dont sniff unlabeled bottles of "stuff" you find in the laundry, they may turn out to contain a strong solution of ammonia that leaves you flat on your back, covered in a noxious smelling liquid wondering what day it is.
3. Dont sneak out at night to the local supermarket carpark with a tin of 'flashpowder' (zinc dust and sulphur) and stare at the ensuing flash as it makes it very easy for the police to ID the "perps'. They are the ones staggering around blindly bumping into one another.
4. Dont try to light a cigarette with the muzzle flash of a rifle. Even if it is only a .303 blank round it will result in that movie "suprised" look, complete with burnt fringe, ringing ears and decimated fag.
5. Getting shot with an air rifle hurts, really hurts! Boy howdy it smarts even when youre drunk and have an extra pair of jeans on as 'protection'.
I could go on for hours but have to work
The two things I recall doing when I was younger:
1) fireworks wars in the woods near my neighborhood. Almost burned the woods down, got chased by the law enforcement officers and neighbors, none of us got caught. We were all dressed in various camouflage for the battle, gave us an advantage when hiding from the cops/neighbors.
2) take an empty CO2 cartridge, cut off the outlet end. Pack this full of match heads and powder from dud fireworks. Tape a straw to the cartridge, slide over straightened coat hanger as a launcher. Put a solar igniter for model rockets into the end and hook up some LONG pieces of wire. Attach wires to the battery of your choice. You hear a big boom and the CO2 cartridge is gone. I launched one from behind my parents house, my sister and one of her friends found it around 3 months later, about 3/4 mile from the launch site
Peace,
Dave
1) fireworks wars in the woods near my neighborhood. Almost burned the woods down, got chased by the law enforcement officers and neighbors, none of us got caught. We were all dressed in various camouflage for the battle, gave us an advantage when hiding from the cops/neighbors.
2) take an empty CO2 cartridge, cut off the outlet end. Pack this full of match heads and powder from dud fireworks. Tape a straw to the cartridge, slide over straightened coat hanger as a launcher. Put a solar igniter for model rockets into the end and hook up some LONG pieces of wire. Attach wires to the battery of your choice. You hear a big boom and the CO2 cartridge is gone. I launched one from behind my parents house, my sister and one of her friends found it around 3 months later, about 3/4 mile from the launch site
Peace,
Dave
I forgot all about those. We had a lake in the back yard so we could tell by the splash how far they went. We then decided that Estes rocket engines taped to a balsa wood stick worked better. The ejection charge intended to pop the parachute will light firecrackers, even M-80's.
We devised all sorts of methods to deliver a "payload" into the lake. As with all experiments carried out by "know it all" kids one went particularly wrong. We attached several strands of 1/2 inch surgical tubing to an old baseball glove and tied the other ends to two nearby mango trees. This made a very large slingshot capable of launching a large lime completely across the lake. As with all of my efforts we kept turning it up. In order to launch bigger items more kids were required to pull the slingshot back farther. There were 3 of us attempling to launch a mango into low earth orbit when a piece of the tubing broke. You can not imagine how much that hurt when it slammed into my bare belly. It still hurts just to think about it. That experiment was permanently terminated.
My brother devised a rather unique delivery method that worked better for small items like limes. Take an old single piece fishing rod, remove all the eyes including the tip. Spear the lime down to about 10 inches above the handle. Hold the rod over your head pointing backwards and whip it overhead launching the lime about 1/4 mile into the lake.
Yes, I grew up in rural Miami (no longer exists) where fruits and vegtables were common and often used as projectiles to throw at other kids. Guavas are particularly messy, and avocados hurt a bunch.
The same is true when you combine a DIY cannon, too much powder that burns way too quickly, and a projectile that is just a tad too big for the barrel. Now that's some real excitement.
Looney
We (students in a campus) used to drink tea made with a water boiled by a couple of razor blades separated from each other by couple of matches. No bad taste.
LOL, a common problem with cops is their low IQ's. You were really unlucky there.
Right, I've never had a problem with them (for some reason they stay away from Fountainebleau Blvd.) but it's always best to play dumb. "Yes sir" and "no sir" and always try to keep your cool even when you know they're wrong.
Here in Spain is a different story, I usually have a few laughs when I talk with them.
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