SITUATION: 9 5th and 6th grade girls have stated for their next girl scout project that they want to do something that involves explosions MISSION: Come up with ideas that are relatively safe so the wife is happy and I get some tonight for coming through EQUIPMENT: I have no freaking idea. Isn't there something I can do with an empty 2 liter bottle of coke and some mentos? SERVICE AND SUPPORT: ME (damnit)! I have no support. It's all on my shoulders. I have to come up with the idea with out triggering any alerts by the DHS. COMMUNICATIONS: Shes da boss. She barks, I listen. They say that this is the order of things and that obedience to 'She who will be obeyed' is life. Some life uh? So seriously, anyone have any safe ways to set off some sort of explosion that the girls would love? I guess I could get some black powder and light it, but Im willing to be that some parents would have a fit. Please help me, this dry spell sucks.
Diet Coke and Mentos. IIRC from the Mythbusters episode, it didn't work with regular Coke. You could also build one of those rocket launcher things that uses water pressure to launch a 2 liter soda bottle into the air. My daughter's science class made them a few years ago and she said they all got a kick out of it (the kids had to build their own "rockets"). I'm sure instructions could be found on teh intarwebz. If you want fairly safe "explosions", you could get some small pieces of dry ice and place them in a tightly-sealed plastic coke bottle with some water. Eventually, the pressure will build to the point that the bottle will blow up. Big noise, but no fire. I don't recommend getting drunk and using dry ice and an empty Bacardi bottle in the same manner. One of my college roommates did that and, when the bottle finally let go, shards of glass ended up stuck in the wall and in my arm (and I was pretty far from it).
Do what we did in college. Put a golf ball sized piece of sodium in a zip-loc bag, leave a tiny corner open, drop the bag in a toilet in the girl's dorm, flush, and run like hell. Warning: Extensive Property Damage and Serious Injury (death) are likely to occur.
Here was a cool one on YouTube... [yt="Toilet Cleaner Bomb"]tFxiKuNGEOM[/yt] The explosion comes at about 4:30 in the video. Very impressive explosion for such a little bomb.
Point of order: "Safe and Kid-friendly" and "fun, home-made explosives" is a contradiction in terms. Unless the event starts with someone saying "Check this out" and ends with a trip to the emergency room, this is destined to fail. OOOH! Tennis ball mortar! Yes, probably not strictly "safe", but hey.
Ok so the mentos / diet coke and the baking soda and vinegar volcanoes were used today. The girls loved it
Our lab tech won't let us get any fun chemicals. My friend and I have tried to get some fun things, but we never get anything. I've stolen copper wire and magnesium ribbon. That's it though. We want to make thermite, but we are having trouble talking him into letting us have the necessary chemicals.
The lab tech is the one that came up with the idea. He just needed a few strong backs, weak minds, and plausible deniability.
