Coolest. Science Fair. Experiment. Ever.

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palad

Golden Member
Jul 18, 2000
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Found a link today to 'The Young Man's Book of Amusement' from 1854. Here's a link to the best artifical volcano ever.

Also, check out this letter from a father whose son received the book as a gift, describing the volcano his kid made.
 
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Jzero

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
18,834
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toxic sulphur dioxide fumes are emitted
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I guess my dad's company pretty much continuously performs this "experiment" in a controlled manner. Interesting.
 
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palad

Golden Member
Jul 18, 2000
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Originally posted by: TheEvil1
sounds like a good way to kill yourself also
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But isn't that the hallmark of every good science fair experiment? :)

 
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cjchaps

Diamond Member
Jul 24, 2000
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"Faraday, this is even when the top plates are connected by the long anal wire."
 
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NogginBoink

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
5,322
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Okay, yeah, doing the volcano thing is probably a Really Bad Idea...


...but ohmigawd would it ever be fun to do!!
 
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FenrisUlf

Senior member
Nov 28, 2001
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Here's a good link for those of you wishing to do destruction with a fairly common pyrotecnic.

Sparkler bomb

I have a friend who made a couple of these. He was pretty impressed at melting a chunk of the parking lot.
 
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arcain

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: palad
Found a link today to 'The Young Man's Book of Amusement' from 1854. Here's a link to the best artifical volcano ever.

Also, check out this letter from a father whose son received the book as a gift, describing the volcano his kid made.
Click to expand...

You do realize that the letter is fake and written for entertainment purposes right? Faraday died in 1867. And a scientist with the name of Glitch.
 
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palad

Golden Member
Jul 18, 2000
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Originally posted by: arcain
Originally posted by: palad
Found a link today to 'The Young Man's Book of Amusement' from 1854. Here's a link to the best artifical volcano ever.

Also, check out this letter from a father whose son received the book as a gift, describing the volcano his kid made.
Click to expand...

You do realize that the letter is fake and written for entertainment purposes right? Faraday died in 1867. And a scientist with the name of Glitch.
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Faraday may have died in 1867, but the letter is purported to have been written in 1856, so there's no conflict there. And the surname Glitch does turn up repeatedly in genealogical databases. So unfortunately, neither of your points lends solid evidence to your theory that the letter is a fake. What makes me wonder, though, is the list of things that happened to poor Hodges: inhalation of quicksilver (mercury) vapor, narrowly escaping injury from an exploding ball of boxwood, being thrown 12 feet by an electrical discharge ("Hodges` hand was still smoking when I started the sketch, I hurried somewhat, as he was pleading to go to the horse doctor."), scrotum burned off, blinded in one eye, and temporary deafness. The whole letter does indeed sound as if it was written to be a joke, but the description of the pasture-sized homemade volcano still stirs my heart with desire. :)


 
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Darein

Platinum Member
Nov 14, 2000
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Wow that is sweet. If I did it my dad would want to video tape it probably. :) Not tell me to stop. Well, as long as its not on our property.
 
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PsychoAndy

Lifer
Dec 31, 2000
10,735
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Eh. Compares to the elementary level science fair experiment I saw 2 years ago as a judge. Some kid took the top glass parts of a bunch of light bulbs off, set one aside, and filled the remainder of the bulbs with various flammable/nonflammable substances, for example, gasoline, and turned on the light. He then proceeded to measure the flame produced with a meterstick, and took pictures, with 6 inch high flames erupting from a bare filament.

I gave him 2nd place.
 
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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
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Speaking of science projects, The Manhattan Project with John Lithgow is worth a rental, though not quite up to the level of the best geek movie of all time, Real Genius.
 
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thomsbrain

Lifer
Dec 4, 2001
18,148
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i had a special chem class senior year of HS where we got to do whatever we wanted as long as we wrote it up. We blew up a few beakers with sodium, blew up hydrogen balloons, made weird toxic goops, blew things through the ceiling, all kinds of great stuff. good class, but no one actually learned anything.
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,599
19
81
Originally posted by: MaxDSP
Originally posted by: crab453
Sodium into water is ALWAYS badass. :cool:
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whyd everything get so dark after the reaction?
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When the water got spewed into the air, the amount of light coming into the camera suddenly increased; the camera tried to compensate. That's probably all it was.

These are some awesome links in this thread; that sodium thing was awesome; looks like it set of secondary explosions in the lake from flying pieces, they look like depth charges or something.:D
Those sparkler things are cool too, but they don't last long enough, especially for what it must cost for that many of them.

Originally posted by: thomsbrain
i had a special chem class senior year of HS where we got to do whatever we wanted as long as we wrote it up. We blew up a few beakers with sodium, blew up hydrogen balloons, made weird toxic goops, blew things through the ceiling, all kinds of great stuff. good class, but no one actually learned anything.
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I think the best we ever did in chemistry class was burn some magnesium strips. We didn't get to play with the other stuff. It was cool in physics when our teacher (HE was a fun guy, always had lots of weird and dangerous gadgets) brought in his 750,000 volt Tesla coil. 1.5-2 foot sparks off of that thing. :D Maybe I'll have to run mine sometime and post some long promised pictures; it's only 100,000 volts though.:)
 
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