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Home made explosions (Too easy)

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posted on Jul, 26 2006 @ 05:58 PM
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Today i was shocked by a TV program that decided to show the results of adding Alkaline metals to water to see there explosive results. Now 2 of these metals literally blew a bath tub to smithereens with a devastating effect and they only used a few grammes of each metal. I thought this was shocking having not known of this reaction.

Are these metals readily available to the general public as i think if only a few grams could do this then a few pounds could could easily be used by a terroist with a devastaing effect. Check out this video and watch the last 2 experiments.

Surely this is wrong airing this on TV if these metals are readily available to anyone

video.google.com...



posted on Jul, 26 2006 @ 07:06 PM
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I think you'd be really hard pushed to obtain samples of either of those two metals from chemistry suppliers, however it took me just a few minutes searching to find links to the infamous 'Anarchist's Cookbook' with it's recipes for nitro-glycerine and other explosives that can be made from readily available ingredients

(no link provided for obvious reasons!)


apc

posted on Jul, 26 2006 @ 08:05 PM
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much of that is disinfo or missing key steps... as a result many a teenager has blown himself up trying to make nitro or RDX.

This doesnt look too much different than Mythbusters. And I dont think Discovery Channel has taken any heat.

Considering that any terrorist knows how to mix diesel fuel and fertilizer, I dont think there's much to worry about with demonstrations like this. Hell, Bart Simpson showed us what happens when you mix a base with an acid... big green explosion!



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 05:31 AM
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I've seen these reactions take place in a school setting before, with lithium and sodium. Any element in the 1st column of the periodic table will react violently with water, and the further down the column you go, the more violent the reaction. (my teacher had potassium as well but was too chicken to test it :p)

To blow up a bathtub, that is realistic for some of the elements further down. Lithium and sodium would not do that, at least with only a few grams. The chemistry teacher who showed me the experiment above also said that one year a student stole a block of sodium, and put it in his pocket. It was a warm day, and the sweat from his skin touched the sodium and started to burn slightly. The student (obviously a retard :p) panicked, and decided he had to get rid of the sodium block. (it was about the size of a hockey puck) He dropped it in the nearest toilet and... yeah. Blew it up


These elements are probably rather difficult to procure, because they are dangerously reactive. Besides the obvious safety hazards, these elements are also problematic to store, and special precautions have to be taken. (I think they typically keep these elements in a jar of oil, making sure there is no air or water inside)

As a completely irrelevant point, in the tv show Stargate, one episode I saw years ago, the characters got ahold of some Naquida (sp) the stuff the stargates are made of. One character mentioned that it was in the first column of periodic table. She set up an underground experiment where a tiny bit of naquida was touched to water, and blew up the entire underground base.


df1

posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 12:06 PM
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Originally posted by thesaint
Surely this is wrong airing this on TV if these metals are readily available to anyone...

How do you feel about teaching chemistry? Surely you are not suggesting that chemistry should be classified or that chemistry text book should be removed from the library shelves. Or maybe you think that anyone checking out chemistry books should be reported to the FBI for further investigation.

Anyone with a little basic chemistry knowledge can create explosions via a variety of methods and chemicals
.



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 12:14 PM
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Did you go to school?


When I was there these reactions were shown to everyone.

The more important point of my post is to point out that the Guardian newspaper in the UK recently exposed the fact that Brainiac fakes all its explosions! This all stemmed from the very experiment that you are describing, when it was revealed that infact when they treid the experiment the metal was so dense it just sank to the bottom o the bath and didnt explode. To make the show more exciting they simply placed some conventional explosives on the bathtub. When pressed a Sky spokeserson revealed that whenever you see anything on Brainiac that could be dangerous it has actually been faked for safety reasons.

I find this a huge disappointment and a terrible example of popular science at its worst.


Guardian Bad Science column

[edit on 27/7/06 by gfad]



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 12:26 PM
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dry ice
water
plastic bottle
noisy as all get out

suprised no one's tried it in thin glass bottles.



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 12:28 PM
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Originally posted by gfad
Did you go to school?


When I was there these reactions were shown to everyone.

The more important point of my post is to point out that the Guardian newspaper in the UK recently exposed the fact that Brainiac fakes all its explosions! This all stemmed from the very experiment that you are describing, when it was revealed that infact when they treid the experiment the metal was so dense it just sank to the bottom o the bath and didnt explode. To make the show more exciting they simply placed some conventional explosives on the bathtub. When pressed a Sky spokeserson revealed that whenever you see anything on Brainiac that could be dangerous it has actually been faked for safety reasons.

I find this a huge disappointment and a terrible example of popular science at its worst.


Guardian Bad Science column

[edit on 27/7/06 by gfad]


Err yes i went to school and was never shown this maybe my school didnt trust us with that kind of knowledge. I must also point out i was also an explosive and demolitions pioneer in the British Army for 6 years and was never made aware of the reactions of these metals with water

Schools have changed a lot since i went to school so maybe it would be normal now. Most we ever did was make plastic.



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 01:25 PM
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Originally posted by jlc163
dry ice
water
plastic bottle
noisy as all get out

suprised no one's tried it in thin glass bottles.

My favorite improvised explosive was:
Pool Chlorine (granular preferable but *much* faster reaction)
Anti-Freeze
Plastic Bottle

It does make quite a nice *BOOOM* in plastic bottles. Sure it is very dangerous...blah...blah...chlorine gas...blah...blah...blah.

Jon


apc

posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 01:56 PM
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Dangerous, illegal, and if youre lucky it wont burst into flames in your face. Chlorine is highly reactive... the gas is the least of your concerns when messing with it. If your hands are moist when handling the granules it will burn your flesh off.

However dry ice bombs are technically legal in most states... and much fun! Glass bottles dont really work too well because they tend to fracture before they shatter causing a slow pressure release. Plastic bottles dont fracture, so they just stretch and stretch until they finally give and tear themselves apart so the pressure release is very rapid.



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 02:06 PM
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Hm..I didn't think you could still find anything from the anarchist cookbook anywhere. I thought it was all taken down. At least from what I had heard years ago about it.



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 02:17 PM
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Heck, all that would be needed to fix the cracking issue is a large ammount of electrical tape, sealed with bike patch stuff. Less than $15.


That's how my cousin's make sparkeler bombs (electrical tape).
They're only as dangerous as to how many you have together. (7 packs as much as they tried.) Rather harmless.


apc

posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 02:21 PM
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Haha! sparkler bombs RULE!! Ive only strapped together a few packs before, buuuuut....

www.dansdata.com...



ooooooh preeeettty.



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 02:44 PM
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Originally posted by apc
Dangerous, illegal, and if youre lucky it wont burst into flames in your face. Chlorine is highly reactive... the gas is the least of your concerns when messing with it. If your hands are moist when handling the granules it will burn your flesh off.


Well, I would hope a person making an explosive device would be at least as careful as someone chlorinating their pool and use a scoop.


Some disclaimers just shouldn't have to be made!

Jon



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 03:02 PM
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Originally posted by thesaint
Err yes i went to school and was never shown this maybe my school didnt trust us with that kind of knowledge. I must also point out i was also an explosive and demolitions pioneer in the British Army for 6 years and was never made aware of the reactions of these metals with water

Schools have changed a lot since i went to school so maybe it would be normal now. Most we ever did was make plastic.


A mix of alkali metals with water is a very typical and easy to understand reaction.
2 X + 2 H2O ==> 2 XOH + H2
As you can see from the reaction above (where X = an group 1 metal) Hydrogen gas is formed which in a fast reaction can create mild explosive effects.

As the reactivity of the elements in group 1 increases as you go down the group, Lithium doesnt react much, Sodium fizzes round a bath of water and Potassium fizzes around a bath of water (faster than sodium) with a purple flame. These reactions are normally shown in pre-GCSE chemistry lessons.

You probably werent aware of these as an explosives expert as they dont really explode. I do find it worrying though that an explosives expert doesnt know of the most basic chemical reactions!



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 05:35 PM
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Originally posted by thesaint
Today i was shocked by a TV program that decided to show the results of adding Alkaline metals to water to see there explosive results. Now 2 of these metals literally blew a bath tub to smithereens with a devastating effect and they only used a few grammes of each metal. I thought this was shocking having not known of this reaction.


This is standard highschool chemistry stuff. When I was back at school in year 8 or 9 (12-13 yrs old) we were shown how this metal plus others react in water. I hardly think this a cause for alarm by any stretch of the imagination



posted on Jul, 27 2006 @ 05:54 PM
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Also,you have to remember that it's legal to set off fireworks all year round.I mean, we sell the general public explosives,and then encourage them to set them off all on one day. You're asking for trouble
. This last 4th was the first time that piccolo petes were outlawed in all of california. Too easily made into bombs. So the least of our worries are foreign terrorists learning chemistry,but our main worry is the home grown ones. They are the ones who truly know how,when,and where to strike here. Idiot youths + unlimited explosives =???



posted on Jul, 28 2006 @ 01:32 AM
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Originally posted by gfad

Originally posted by thesaint
Err yes i went to school and was never shown this maybe my school didnt trust us with that kind of knowledge. I must also point out i was also an explosive and demolitions pioneer in the British Army for 6 years and was never made aware of the reactions of these metals with water

Schools have changed a lot since i went to school so maybe it would be normal now. Most we ever did was make plastic.


A mix of alkali metals with water is a very typical and easy to understand reaction.
2 X + 2 H2O ==> 2 XOH + H2
As you can see from the reaction above (where X = an group 1 metal) Hydrogen gas is formed which in a fast reaction can create mild explosive effects.

As the reactivity of the elements in group 1 increases as you go down the group, Lithium doesnt react much, Sodium fizzes round a bath of water and Potassium fizzes around a bath of water (faster than sodium) with a purple flame. These reactions are normally shown in pre-GCSE chemistry lessons.

You probably werent aware of these as an explosives expert as they dont really explode. I do find it worrying though that an explosives expert doesnt know of the most basic chemical reactions!


Well no personally i dont think it worrying as if it is "High School stuff" then why would they bother teaching us that in the military. I thank you for your description above anyway and could only imagine that this chemical reaction has somehow passed me by in life or that i have not paid much attention when it was shown to me. I didnt think i was posting something new on here but was however asking of a possibility. When i was at school chemistry was not part of my education unless you chose it as a speciallity subject in the last year ready for your exams to which i chose physics instead. I asked a question, made an ass out of myself by looking like an uneducated goon but hey we learn something new everyday and today i have learnt of this chemical reaction.



posted on Jul, 28 2006 @ 07:29 AM
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Originally posted by jlc163
dry ice
water
plastic bottle
noisy as all get out

suprised no one's tried it in thin glass bottles.


Hmm did try bakingpowder and plastic bottles.. had too much baking powder and didnt know how fast it would explode did a little shake to the bottle was going to throw it away but the thing exploded.. so yeah not a goo idea i was lucky not to go blind.. my left eye was bleeding they eye was all red coverd with blood and my vision on that eye was all white.. not good to mess with things if you don't know what your doing... this was many years ago.. i probably know the time limits or could get safty googles.. but ive stopped messing around with explosives, made a promise


Anyway isn't those unstable elements keept in glycerine.



posted on Jun, 27 2008 @ 02:07 PM
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