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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Bottle Bombs

Mix a little Drano, aluminum foil and water in plastic pop bottle and stand back.


Tin foil bottle bomb

They can be dangerous. The Snopes story says they will detonate 30 seconds after being picked up. This makes me think that water is needed for the reaction to occur. Dry Drano and aluminum foil by itself may not react. So in order to make this a "booby-trap", you would have to float the Drano in a foil boat, which would require some dexterity and care.

The best part of this video is, of course, the way the plastic bottle distends before it explodes. I've never seen that before.

From Steve.

Update February 2017 replaced missing video with another one.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tried Mentos in Cola too?

Chuck Pergiel said...

I don't think Mentos in Diet Coke would produce the same result. I suspect the Mentos just causes the carbon dioxide that is dissolved in the diet coke to be released all at once. You would get the same result from shaking the bottle. The only deal with the Mentos is you get a couple of seconds to get clear before it starts spraying diet pop everywhere. There is no chemical reaction going on, so there is no additional gas being produced. You can make a pop-bottle bomb using dry ice, because dry ice packs more CO2 per unit volume than soda pop.