Sunday, September 14, 2008

There Is No Predicting

...Just which Useless Tricks any one person will pick up. Tam had never seen Orange-Peel Pryotechnics until today -- I had a tangerine for dessert and wandered into our Data Central squeezing the peel into a lighter flame: Foom! Wooomph! Delightful little bursts of flame, though tangerines don't give you quite the weird curls of fast-dissipating black smoke oranges create.

Tam was chatting on the telephone and stopped for a moment, fascinated by an innocent citrus peel producing tiny fireballs.

Yeah, we make our own fun here at Roseholme Cottage!

9 comments:

Carteach said...

The next time a camp fire is available for play... show her what can be done with powdered creamer.

FOOF.

Turk Turon said...

Cool!

When I was a 14-year-old at summer camp, we discovered that spray deodorant and a lighter could make a functioning flamethrower, which could cut a neat hole in the wire window screens of our cabins.

Ah, halcyon days!

Anonymous said...

Three of the four ingredients used in Boomerite are probably found in your house. The precursor chemicals for the fourth are in air. None of the ingredients appear to trigger the explosives sniffers at the airports.

Hence another component for my extreme contempt of the TSA.

Roberta X said...

It's the age-old story of arms vs. armor!

I'm not sure what I'd think about a citrus-oil fuel-air bomb. There's something inherently goofy about a weapon that smells all fresh and orange-y!

Powdered creamer, hey? Powdered anything burnable can be exciting in airborne suspension. I haven't tried coffee creamer. Does powdered milk work, too?

Turk, cheap hairspray is the real "A" ticket for homemade flamethrowers. Bit of a risk, however.

Anonymous said...

Powdered milk works but the higher the fat content the better.

For expert advice on how to make fireballs with "coffee creamer" go here.

Dr. StrangeGun said...

Lycopodeum powder for the win.

Quigley said...

Btw: WD-40 is one hell of a flamethrower - the next level up from hairspray.

MythBusters did a "viral video" special and made a vertical air cannon to test the wood shaving ignition video - it produced an impressive fireball. However, then they pushed it to the next level with coffee creamer and the fireball was something to behold - easily on the order of magnitude as when they blew up a big propane tank except the creamer left a smoldering, toasted brown sugar coating on everything beneath it. They had to use one of their high-lift forklifts to load the creamer out of a massive container you would ordinarily see on a pallet - just to give you an idea of scale. It was awesome.

Anonymous said...

Then there's always powdered sugar.

Anonymous said...

"The emergency response has been suburb,"

cut-and-pasted from the article - no wonder MSM is made of fail