Gothis in an email snopes confirms as "true": pop bottle,water, drano and aluminum foil creates an "explosive" bottle burst once disturbed snopes.com: Bottle Bombs
whoopie doo.... lol .... everything old is new again. all ingredients except aluminum foil in bottle. very carefully insert aluminum foil in upright bottle neck above liguid. we would have this slightly undersize extended plug with a tape tab. tape tab was to keep aluminum above liguid. tape was thin enough you could fold it outside of bottle and screw cap on. if when securing cap aluminum dropped into liquid, immediately throw like a live grenade. these were placed where they would be knocked over accidentally. shortly after as in video they would pop. never had anyone hurt by them, but now i see how possible that could be. we detonated almost all of ours ourselves by throwing them.
This combo makes hydrogen gas. That always made me wonder about the economics of generating hydrogen in this way. Aluminum - free Water - free (east of the Rockies) Lye - ? don't know - what are the power inputs to creating lye vs. the amount of hydrogen produced? What would a cost/benefit analysis yield? Of course you can't get anything for free and (at least some of) the energy you're harvesting was put into the creation of aluminum, but on that note, you're reclaiming a bunch. Well anyway - the economics: Buy a bunch of lye collect a bunch of cans put them all together and collect the hydrogen How many BTUs can you get and how does it compare to a gallon of gas in terms of cost? Worth investigating... Hmm - maybe when I get the solar panels up, deck rebuilt, food put away....
Hmmmm.... the old mental gears (cue rusty creaking sound effects...) are turning...... Hows about a truck running on laundry bleach and old soda cans, better containment vessel for the pressure....... kinda like steam power. Catch the resulting hydrogen in a tank, then pipe it into a modified engine. Or the same thing in a fixed backyard generator system. In high school, we did it with pieces of zinc tossed into a plastic bag with some bleach. The reaction inflates the bag like a balloon, then the teacher hits it with a flame on a stick - "BANG!" Great fun! Putting a coffee can of water out in the open passage just outside the railing, toss in a chunk of metallic sodium - "BANG!" and a splash of water thrown up onto the just exiting Math-wing students! They hated having Science just under them.....
hydrogen atoms are pretty hard to contain (store)but if you could generate enough to keep a tank filled short term until is mixed in a carburetorand ingested ,you might have something for the mad max apocalypse desert races
about same as a dry ice bomb, but more toxic. Instead of H2 the dry ice sublimes to gas and expands bottle with CO2. You could probably do this simply enough with baking soda and vinegar.The CO2 would expand until the plastic bottle goes boom. I would add to the one making the H2, a lit punk, to ignite the hydrogen, then you'd have some fireworks.
Hey! Watch it, I resemble that remark. We only did this until 10 years of age or so, then moved up to gunpowder/black powder and waterproof fuses for fishing.
IIRC a ga tech student got arrested for placing a couple of those around campus a couple of years ago.
strap one to a dowel ~ diameter of 12 gauge. Empty load from birdshot and you have a nade launcher. aahhh wish I was a kid again.
