Nathan

You think you're afraid of riding on an airplane now? You just wait...

I'm going to quote this article directly from the post at popsci.typepad.com, because this is the second post of the day and I'm too lazy to write out another full post. From popsci.typepad.com article "The Amazing Rusting Aluminum":

Quote,

Findings: Rust can hold an airplane together or dissolve it to bits.
Element: Aluminum
Project: Destroying it
Time: 1 hour
Dabbler | | | | | Master

"Unless you are a representative of a national meteorological bureau licensed to carry a barometer (and odds are you’re not), bringing mercury onboard an airplane is strictly forbidden. Why? If it got loose, it could rust the plane to pieces before it had a chance to land. You see, airplanes are made of aluminum, and aluminum is highly unstable.

"Wait, isn’t one of the great things about aluminum that, unlike iron, it doesn’t rust? Am I talking about the same aluminum? Yes! Your aluminum pot is made of a highly reactive chemical. It simply has a trick that lets it disguise itself as a corrosion-resistant metal.

"When iron rusts, it forms iron oxide—a reddish, powdery substance that quickly flakes off to expose fresh metal, which immediately begins to rust, and so on until your muffler falls off.

"But when aluminum rusts, it forms aluminum oxide, an entirely different animal. In crystal form, aluminum oxide is called corundum, sapphire or ruby (depending on the color), and it is among the hardest substances known. If you wanted to design a strong, scratchproof coating to put on a metal, few things other than diamond would be better than aluminum oxide.

"By rusting, aluminum is forming a protective coating that’s chemically identical to sapphire—transparent, impervious to air and many chemicals, and able to protect the surface from further rusting: As soon as a microscopically thin layer has formed, the rusting stops. (“Anodized” aluminum has been treated with acid and electricity to force it to grow an extra-thick layer of rust, because the more you have on the surface, the stronger and more scratch-resistant it is.)

"This invisible barrier forms so quickly that aluminum seems, even in molten form, to be an inert metal. But this illusion can be shattered with aluminum’s archenemy, mercury.

"Applied to aluminum’s surface, mercury will infiltrate the metal and disrupt its protective coating, allowing it to “rust” (in the more destructive sense) continuously by preventing a new layer of oxide from forming. The aluminum I-beam below rusted half away in a few hours, something that would have taken an iron beam years.

"I’ve heard that during World War II, commandos were sent deep into German territory to smear mercury paste on aircraft to make them inexplicably fall apart. Whether the story is true or not, the sabotage would have worked. The few-micron-thick layer of aluminum oxide is the only thing holding an airplane together. Think about that the next time you’re flying. Or maybe it’s better if you don’t."

Go to the actual article

Professional Amateurs

Pretty much everyone has heard of the Diet Coke and Mentos effects, and a lot of people have tried it. It can produce some quite interesting effects, including exploding if you somehow manage to jam the cap on before the coke expands out, but no one that I have seen has taken it to quite this level...

Follow this link, scroll down to the video frame, and press play to see the Coke/Mentos fountain of your life.

You may also notice that the url address tells you that Popular Science is using the same website as I am to host their blog.

A novelty way to cook your marshmallows

Now that we are so infused with technology, ability of expression, and a severe addiction to shiny things, the toy industry cannot do anything other than improve. Many science kits increasingly focus on fire and explosions, which I like, but they are not steeping too far towards TNT, unfortunately. Nonetheless, the science kit that I am using right now has several experiments that include burning things.

Today, we will soon be making colored flames using sodium, copper, calcium, and carbon hybrids by burning ethyl alcohol and exposing the chemicals, diluted with water, to the flame. No, we're not making the next Hiroshima, but it sure is fun. I only regret that we could not have a chance to use the mapp gas blowtorch.

Several simple ways to color flame are to add magnesium, powdered or not,  calcium, sodium, table salt (sodium chloride), carbon, and many other semi-organic building blocks.

If you really want to be the hardcore pyro, you can take your chances with thermite. Thermite burns at an extremely high temperature, and cannot be lit with ordinary matches, or even gunpowder composites. Many companies that make thermite sell thermite lighting compounds, textured like clay, so that they can be lit with matches and burn up to the temperature at which thermite ignites. There are other, less conventional ways to light thermite, including starting it with magnesium, which is, however, notoriously unreliable.

The reward for lighting thermite is in the way it burns. It is much like a pure, more powerful form of the magnesium flame. It burns white hot and makes much of the ground below it turn to glass afterwards.

Magnesium can also make quite a show, because it can be lit by fire, and while it may not be quite as impressive as thermite, it is so much cheaper, and can be aquired in far greater quantities. It is easy to "accidentally" toss some magnesium shreds into a campfire to spice it up, make it turn white, and roar 10 feet high.

With such websites as unitednuclear.com and yarchive.net/explosives/index, there is a fine line between what is military grade and what you can get at Big Y.

The alchemist and his popcorn

Sodium is a rare material that actually explodes when it comes in contact with water; it is so sensitive that it instantly burns your skin on contact, from only the moisture on your skin.

Chlorine is a both highly toxic and flammable gas, originally used in the trenches in World War One.It has many of the properties of water, and can therefore also react with sodium.

When chlorine and sodium are mixed, they create quite a reaction...and they create sodium chloride: salt. In the recent experiment on the Popular Science Magazine website, liquid sodium was put into a bowl, and chlorine gas was blown on top of it. When the two ignited, they began burning off gaseous sodium chloride onto the popcorn suspended by wire mesh a foot or so above ground zero. What a way to salt your popcorn!

Watch the movie on Youtube,

or at the Popular Science website.

Unfortunately, the wire mesh soon melted, and the popcorn fell into the fiery bowl, making many little fiery balls.