[Sca-cooks] Sparkler inferno (OT, obviously).

[Siegfried Heydrich]

    When I was about 16, a shrimp boat caught fire and ran aground on an
oyster bed just off the end of my street, about 150 yards out in Estero Bay
from the seawall. The hull burnt to the keel, and after salvaging what they
could, the owners and the coast guard basically decided that it wasn't a
menace to navigation, and their budget couldn't cover removal, anyway . . .
So this hulk sat there for a couple of years, just keel & ribs, until as the
4th approached, I decided to get rid of the bloody thing.
    I made about 30 lbs of thermite (which is disgustingly cheap and easy to
do), added some magnesium , well, because it was the 4th, divvied it into
half gallon plastic jugs, and I was set. I took my john boat out the night
before, and chewed up a good pair of shoes (oyster bed) digging out holes
for the jugs under the keel, and set them. I had to go back the following
evening to set it.
    Used a rather ingenious fuse, too - it was set to go off when the tide
began to ebb after fullness. Sure enough, about 20 minutes after high tide,
(the water was about 3' deep)  off it went. Somewhere I have the numbers on
the cubic feet of water instantly converted to steam - made my eyes bug out
when I ran them later. Needless to say, I'd been, well, exuberant. The 10
lbs of magnesium powder was particularly spectacular - especially
underwater. The hulk was essentially vaporized - all I found the following
afternoon were chunks no more than long slivers. The oyster bed basically
went away.
    As luck would have it, an airliner was turning over the island, and when
the charges lit, it was the flare from hell. The pilot reported it, as did
boaters on their VHF radios, and everyone who lived along the bay. The flash
lit up the entire bay for a couple of seconds, and was seen for about 35
miles. Since it was the 4th, everyone assumed it was fireworks, though
nobody could really figure out what kind. This had been more like a nuclear
flash, or a transformer shorting, which is what some people reported.
    However, I'd not been stupid - the charges were set to blow the chunks
back away from the island, into the mangroves. (there's dumb, and then
there's DUMB, OK?) The nice thing about underwater explosions is that after
the flotsam scatters, there's nothing there. When the area was searched by
all & sundry, nothing was found. The only thing they could dig up was these
strange, sponge like masses of what appeared to be soft iron, which they
thought was just a remnant of the boat fire long ago.
    Ah, well, the wreck was gone, and it had been a spectacular and happy
4th . . .

    Sieggy


----- Original Message -----
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at efn.org>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2001 1:49 PM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sparkler inferno (OT, obviously).


> Okay, okay...
>
> Sieggy's story about the LOX reminded me of one that I have to share
> now...
>
> One of my chemistry professors, during a lecture in which he showed us
> what happens when you get elemental sodium wet, told us about something
> that happened to him when he was is grad school. It seems that one
> summer he a a bunch of other chem-grad geeks rented a cottage out on a
> lake, planning to spend the summer fishing, boating, etc, and not doing
> chemistry. Until 4th of July rolled around of course. They didn't have
> regular fireworks, but they did have a boulder-sized chunk of elemental
> sodium (they were chem geeks- of course they had some!). So they decided
> to drop it off the dock into the lake and see what happened. (!) They
> dropped it, it went *glub* and that was it. He said they turned around
> to go back in, muttering about it must have been too big, no, it was the
> water volume, no maybe it was because the water was too cold...
>
> *FOOM!!!!*
>
> It went off like a cannon, sprayed half the lake (it seemed) over them,
> and inspired neighbors from the far side of the lake to call the police.
> Of course these sweet young science students knew *nothing* about an
> explosion...
>
> Jim still blows things up in the classroom with great regularity, but I
> don't think he's dropped any sodium of the dock recently.
>
> 'Lainie
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