kids making toy explosions in tincan

[PeterInBrat]

You can make rockets and simple fireworks by clipping the heads off of paper matches. Doesn't work with wooden ones.

As for burning steel wool, it's not dangerous at all. Need to keep moving to get enough oxygen to burn. Fun effect. Tie it to a string, lit it and swing it around.

 

[windeguy]

Best explosion ever for me was an attempt to get rid of some burrowing animals. I poured about a half gallon of gasoline into their hole. I waited about a minute for the gasoline to evaporate a bit. From about 100 feet away I shot a flaming arrow into the hole. The sound produced was almost sub-sonic rather than a boom. The earth moved.

My neighbors thought we had an earthquake from the force of that explosion. It gave me a respect for what gasoline fumes could do.

 

[MerengueDutchie]

Best explosion ever for me was an attempt to get rid of some burrowing animals. I poured about a half gallon of gasoline into their hole. I waited about a minute for the gasoline to evaporate a bit. From about 100 feet away I shot a flaming arrow into the hole. The sound produced was almost sub-sonic rather than a boom. The earth moved.

My neighbors thought we had an earthquake from the force of that explosion. It gave me a respect for what gasoline fumes could do.

Great - I had a similar experience with an ants nest that wouldn't go away in my parents yard. I poured down 2.5L of white spirit down the main entrance, waited a minute, lit it and boom - the earth shook, the fire lasted for 10 mins and the ground was very, very hot. Never saw those ants again.

 

[tommeyers]

Nitrogen tri-iodide is great fun too. Easy to make. I had a lump of "something" remaining after creating the mixture and painting it on paper. So, I tossed that lump on the pavement and scuffed it with my shoe ====> ****! My shoe nearly went through my foot; no blood no damage just memories. The paper we painted blew into pieces that when my mom tried to sweep it also popped!! More fun.

 

[Xavier_Onassis]

When I was in the 7th grade, a kid named Danny Drennan and I used to make rockets out of vacuum cleaner tubing we got at the Goodwill, His brother welded pointy cones on the noses. We filled them with magnesium powder and Potassium Perchlorate and set them off with magnesium ribbons. Sometimes they went whoosh! and went really high, and sometimes they exploded. We set them off on Saturday mornings in the elementary school playground. We made a five foot tall rocket and it exploded with a very loud BANG and left a crater about nine inches deep in the baseball field. So we ran like Hell. The cops came and poked around, but eventually went away. We filled in the hole and took all the scrap and never used the playground again.

I imagine that it might make the Kansas City Times if we did it today, probably with cops questioning Muslims and such.

 

[Mauricio]

We would make smoke bombs of a piece of pvc pipe and stuff sparklers inside from both ends with their heads to the center. Then light the last one and enter it as well. That would make for a nice smoke bomb.

 

[jstarebel]

Anybody ever make spoke guns with paper match heads?