Stale napalm burns even longer than we expected. Also it looks like a cheese wheel. Check it out!

The post New Video: Burning ALL of Our Napalm at Once appeared first on Blasted Science.

Late Condolences to a Brother in Arms

Turns out we aren’t the only idiots in the world. Some other guy decided to copy us and make a Jacob’s ladder. Unlike us, though, they were unable to keep themselves safe. They are no longer with us. Actually, they haven’t been with us for almost a year now. We didn’t get the message until recently.

Homemade Jacob’s Ladder

A young boy, not unlike the members of Blasted Science, built a Jacob’s Ladder in his garage, just like we did. Tragically, he was found dead by his parents.

A 15-year-old boy in Ohio electrocuted himself while attempting a science experiment he saw on YouTube, Reuters reported.

The teenager, Morgan Wojciechowski, tried to conduct a high-voltage experiment, called Jacob’s Ladder, in the garage of his home in northern Ohio. Wojciechowski’s parents found him there on Tuesday, ABC News reported, and emergency crews took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Source

Cause of Death

The article suggests that the reason he died was because many online Jacob’s Ladder tutorials don’t have any warning about how dangerous it is:

It’s easy to find a Jacob’s Ladder tutorial on the internet, and it might not tell you you can die from making it.

That’s a pretty awful thing for people to do. How could they just ignore the danger to their viewer’s lives? That’s downright sinister. A big problem for many tutorials is that the author can unintentionally assume that the viewer already knows how dangerous electrical experiments are.

(Editor’s note: contrary to popular belief, we aren’t guilty of this whatsoever; we know how dangerous Jacob’s Ladders are, but choose to ignore it. Because we’re smart, y’all.)

The Lesson

Don’t be a dumb! Compared to the one in the article, our Jacob’s Ladder had double the voltage and we probably took less precautions. There’s also no chance that we’re more intelligent than our deceased compadre. How did we survive? The answer is simply the combination of our two best traits: sheer luck and incredibly thick, resistive skin.

Blasted Science’s first attempt at a Jacob’s Ladder.

The post Possible Foreshadowing? A Failed Jacob’s Ladder Experiment appeared first on Blasted Science.

This update is a couple months late. We noticed.

The post New Video: Blasted Science Documentary appeared first on Blasted Science.

5. Spaghetti

A thermic lance is a heavy-duty demolition tool that burns steel alloys and aluminum in pressurized oxygen to create temperatures hot enough to cut… anything, really. Instead of burning steel, this do-it-yourself version uses spaghetti as fuel.

Spaghetti may not seem particularly flammable, but with pure oxygen just about everything becomes a pyromaniac’s dream. With just an oxygen tank, aluminum foil, and a small handful of spaghetti, you can make a thermic lance that burns hot enough to melt through concrete.

Thermic lances are used in construction and demolition to cut large pieces of steel. This homemade version can get hot enough to melt metal. All you have to do is hook up one side of a small hose to an oxygen tank and attach a small amount of spaghetti wrapped in aluminum foil to the other. Igniting the spaghetti in the oxygen-rich tube produces a crazy-hot flame, creating the cheapest steel-melting lance you’ll ever see.

It is worth noting that Blasted Science has constructed their own thermic lance. However, ours never runs out of oxygen. Instead of a tank, we hooked it up to an oxygen generator for longer burning.

4. Ammonia

Ammonia itself can be dangerous (inhalation not recommended), but when combined with iodine, the extremely volatile explosive Nitrogen Triiodide is formed. Touching it with just about anything is enough to make it explode.

All you need is ammonium hydroxide, easily purchased as a household cleaner, and iodine crystals, easily purchased online. Simply dissolve the iodine crystals in the ammonium hydroxide and wait a few hours. Pour the resulting liquid over filter paper to collect the explosive. Be careful: even though the compound is more stable while in solution, it can still potentially explode while dissolved.

Nitrogen Triiodide has no practical use, due to its extreme sensitivity to friction, but it can certainly be entertaining. Be extremely careful with these crystals; the slightest touch and you can kiss your fingers goodbye. It’s recommended that you start small, and work your way up to bigger amounts once you know what you’re doing.

Blasted Science attempted to make Nitrogren Triiodide, but our iodine samples weren’t nearly pure enough for it to work.  Sticking live wires into a bottle filled with iodized salt water probably wasn’t the best way to obtain iodine.

3. Etch-a-Sketch

This common toy is loaded with powdered aluminum. Aluminum, sadly, doesn’t burn. Unless it’s combined with rust, that is.

Mixing powdered aluminum and iron oxide (rust) in the correct ratio, three parts iron oxide to one part aluminum, creates thermite. Thermite isn’t explosive, but burns at insanely high temperatures and produces iron. However, it also requires insanely high temperatures to ignite; a normal flame won’t do it. Using a sparkler is an easy way to get it started. Never ignite thermite near yourself; it spews molten metal all over the place. You don’t want to be anywhere near it once it’s lit.

After the time of writing (this list has been in limbo for a long time), Grant Thompson and Cody’s Lab successfully created thermite from an Etch-a-Sketch. The video from Cody’s Lab goes into greater detail on their project.

Thermite burns at well above 4,000° Fahrenheit: hot enough to melt through things not usually considered meltable, such as dirt. Good luck finding a container that can hold it. Most commonly, ceramic containers are used, such as flowerpots. Surprisingly, it is 100% legal to own and use. Have fun.

2. Drain Cleaner

Drain cleaner, aluminum foil, and a pop bottle are used to make what is called a “Drano bomb.” Combining drain cleaner (sodium hydroxide) and aluminum foil produces hydrogen gas. If the reaction occurs in a sealed bottle, the pressure will increase until the bottle explodes.

Using drain cleaner to make bottle bombs can be very dangerous. The explosion can cause chemical burns and the loss of fingers. For this device in particular, please be mature. These bombs are often left in people’s yards and mailboxes, and can cause severe damage to people and property. Be extremely careful with explosives and never use them to harm anyone or anything.

Alternatively, try stretching a balloon over the mouth of the bottle. The balloon will fill with hydrogen gas, which is lighter than helium and extremely flammable. Try lighting the balloon with a match, even a small balloon will make a sizeable explosion. You’ll definitely want to wear thick gloves while lighting it.

Blasted Science’s hydrogen bomb in the making

Blasted Science can confirm that this works very well. Unfortunately, our video has become corrupted, and our only evidence is the single photograph above.

1. Lantern Battery

Using a power supply built from microwave oven transformers, the carbon rods in lantern batteries happen to work perfectly as electrodes in a miniature electric arc furnace hot enough to turn metal and rocks into molten goop.

The entire process is detailed by Grant Thompson in one of his most dangerous DIY projects to date. This project is a bit more complicated than the rest: you’ll need to use the transformers from a pair of microwaves to convert the electricity from your house into a current capable of forming an arc. But the effort is well worth it. With a couple of microwaves, pliers, carbon rods, and a block of firebrick, you can make a forge capable of melting just about everything imaginable.

However, all that power comes at the price of serious danger. This is easily the most dangerous item on this list. You’ll be dealing with electricity, extremely high temperatures, toxic fumes, and molten metal. Because of this, take appropriate safety measures. This project is not for the faint of heart.

Once again, Blasted Science has constructed their own version of this. However, it deserves more than just a mention in a list. Expect more information on our arc furnace in the future.

Just to prove we aren’t making this up

The post Top 5 More Household Items to Turn into Weapons appeared first on Blasted Science.

Learning about electricity can be overwhelming. The purpose of this series is to explain the fundamentals of electricity in a simple and practical way. Let’s get started.

What is Wall Power?

U.S. Wall Outlet

Also known as mains power, AC power, or household power, this refers to the electricity you get from those little wall sockets you plug everything into. Wall power is by far the most commonly used source of electricity for dangerous DIY projects. This is the only kind of electricity you’ll need to know about for anything Blasted Science does. In the United States, wall power is 120VAC at 60Hz, with a maximum current of 15A. That’s a lot of big numbers. We’ll go into more detail about what that means later in the series, but this essentially means three things about wall power:

• It can kill you.
• It can supply enough power for just about any project you can imagine.
• If you stick one end of a wire into both holes, there will be a big flash and the outlet won’t work anymore.

Thankfully, it’s easy to get the outlet working again. These days, it’s as easy as opening your fuse box and flipping a switch.

How to Use it

First things first: read our article on electrical safety. Now that you’re up to speed on the basic dangers of electricity, how do we even use it? We’ll need a cord that plugs into the wall socket, with the other ends exposed. The easiest way to hack this together is to find an old power cable or something similar and cut off one end with a railroad spike and hammer (or a pair of wire cutters). Inside the main cord there will be two or three smaller wires (Don’t worry about the one that plugs into the circular bottom hole, we won’t need it). Strip the ends of the smaller wires and you’ll have something like this:

You’re done! If you plug the cable into the wall and touch the two ends together, you’ll get some beautifully bright sparks and a blown fuse. This can already be used as a power supply for a number of projects, but it becomes far more useful with some additional parts. Later posts in this series will go into detail on what this can be used for. Stay tuned!

The post How to Use Electricity: Wall Power appeared first on Blasted Science.