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

[ruadh]

things that go BANG ,,,,,,,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Siegfried Heydrich" <baronsig at peganet.com>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2001 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sparkler inferno (OT, obviously).


>     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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>
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