Maybe I should just stick a toe in first ....
Offline Hello, I found a topic here while doing a Google search, so I joined, then realized the topic was three years old. I thought," maybe nobody will mind if I post in it", and then considered that maybe it would be better to test the waters rather than doing a swan dive and discovering the water was like, 3 feet deep and full of sharp objects.
I'm just awful about introductions. In the past I have done them in all manners. Usually involving high explosives and graphics, combined with humor and just enough bite to avoid boring, but not cross the line into fullblown narcissism.
I got the name because I used to do special FX, mostly CGI, and it's easy to type and I can remember it. Being extremely old, I was using it before there was an FX network. I would say I am agnostic, but that doesn't really quite describe my belief system.
I have no idea where this is going, I only joined on a whim. The topic was about melting arctic ice. And the IPCC.
Is this thing on? I will check back later, if I remember.
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Dude, go ahead and post in that thread if you want to. It happens all the time around here and the discussion starts all over again. Especially for a topic like that as we have new science to work with on the matter.
Past that, do you still have legit access to high energy chemicals? My local rocketry club has a dentist who can order NO2 in bulk but most of the rest of the stuff has to be bought in small amounts with cash. We could make some great youtube videos if you are interested.
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There will be no explosive chemicals! Besides, hydrogen + oxygen is what all the cool kids are using these days. You just need a 12 volt battery and some water.
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And what more can you tell us of things that go boom in the night? Post often.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
If somebody does some electrolysis and blows themselves up, I would feel bad. You know how much bang you can get from a gallon of water? More than enough to kill you.
I KNOW! It's probably a good thing when I was kid we never thought of it. Even a small garbage bag of oxygen+hydrogen makes a big bang. Of course when I was a kid we had chemistry sets that actually contained real chemicals. And we had Bunsen burners and did all kinds of experiments that required face shields and an emergency shower over in the corner.
I'm not kidding. The High School chemlab had as standard issue a shower, fire extinguishers, and face shields and heavy aprons to wear while doing experiments. Experiments that could actually go terribly wrong and might involve losing your eyebrows. We wore gloves that were designed to protect your skin from both acid burns, as well as real burns.
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As a kid, I was into things that go bang.
I started off with the original gunpowder - carbon (from charcoal), sulfur (typically bought from the local chemist), and potassium nitrate.
The nitrate was a bit harder to get - got nasty reactions when I asked about it at the local chemists.
The I discovered a wholesale chemical supply company which had no problem selling it to me by the pound.
Had trouble getting a good bang from gunpowder, needed to packed into a tight container with a fuse. Had problems making effective fuses. More success making rockets.
Then I found out about powdered zinc and sulfur. Yikes!
I did get to hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. I pretty much agree with your comments on that stuff, generated together at just the right proportions for a good bang!.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMB2VR0087w
Kids these days. Seriously, I can't believe we never thought of that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agYME8MsqbE
Can you imagine the simple fun one could have with, say, a relatively large balloon?
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I had an older brother, so I benefited greatly from his (and his crazy buddies) mistakes. Mostly.
Just one 6 inch mortar round going off in the tube can squash your enthusiasm for large pyrotechnics.
And no, I wasn't the one that got it in the crotch. Did you know that those cool sparkly things you see in fireworks, the kind that blow up into a big blue star, then sparkly sparkly, did you know that even when one explodes so that it embeds the sparkly stuff into flesh, they still burn for a while?
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Hello FX!
You have experience in home pyrotechnics? Me too... I and my brothers had our share of fun. We made some gunpowder, but without proper ratio, we ran out of sulphur from dad's supply and you won't buy it around here. Not cheaply.
I spent a lot of saltpeter on making igniter cords and mixing it with sugar... Internet was very rare, expensive and unreliable these days, I could not get a decent recipe.
But later I found out about smoke grenades, I made them by cooking saltpeter and sorbitol in certain ratio. It's an altered rocket fuel recipe and makes extreme amount of white smoke. Wonderful, I had so much fun with these.
But later they stopped selling saltpeter in my city... I wonder why, so I had to try something else. Do you know what happens when you mix together potash and glycerin, both cheaply available at pharmacy? It ignites and burns! Just don't soak it too much.
But the greatest bomb was... acetonperoxide. Three cheap chemicals from drugstore, mix them together and you've got this extra strong explosive. It doesn't burn, it just explodes. I made a lot of it, but I had no way to ignite it. So I packed a small amount real tight in toilet paper and spilled a puddle of petrol over it. Man, when it blew up, the house was shaking. Daamn, what a power.
Once I wanted to ignite a tiny bit of acetonperoxide for a test and half meter from me there was the rest of it drying on paper. Half meter wasn't enough. I had my hair burned on half of my head. Fortunately just hair ends, people didn't notice unless I told them to look closer.
Oh, the memories... That's probably genetics, my dad was an extreme chemist too. Once as a kid he almost poisoned his family with bromine gas
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Bah, forget the toe. Around here most of us cannonball in and apologize for hurt feelings later if we feel like it. It is always easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Welcome to the forums.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Dictators demand you ask for permission, secular civility is based on mutual consent, not demands.
On thing that bothers me about some new posters is that they come in here with expectations as if life is a script and they project their script on us and set themselves up for disappointment when we don't follow their idea of how they expect things to go.
This happens outside the web world in day to day life too. And I see atheist pull this too. Classes and labels and nationalities and races all pull this fallacy of expectation. To all I say LIFE IS NOT A SCRIPT!
I think the only pragmatic way humans in general can get along is to not project idealistic utopia scripts on those around you. The best you can do is treat people as individuals.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Taking the path of least resistance, makes both men and rivers crooked.
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Yowch! The closest we came to hurting others was setting the farm on fire. We got it put out before anyone saw us. Twice.
Now that I think about it, we were quite insane as children. Gasoline was something to play with, and chemicals were for rockets and explosions.
Of course Dad being a Rocket Scientist and encouraging this behavior didn't help. Well, he didn't know about the gasoline. I burnt my lungs with sulfur once. That was the end of chemistry experiments that involved sulfur.
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That also happens in the real world.
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