Homemade rocket fuel--too successful!

For my students. Note the safety equipment. Can you guess the chemicals involved? Another good example of the usefulness of risk management ("If this does something unexpected, what's my safety margin?")

Oops, forgot to clarify for the YouTube audience--there were no students in the room. I NEVER try a demo the first time in front of a class. Especially if it involves any sort of pyrotechnics. Took me 7 years to work up the nerve just to try a bit of sodium metal in water myself, with no students around. I don't know of a more conservative chemistry teacher than myself. That's because in my years of watching and listening to other teachers, I have a very healthy respect for things going differently than you might expect. Makes for a great safety lecture ("Then there's the time I got lit on fire... Oh, yeah, and another time when the student took off their goggles at their desk because they were done with the lab and some chemical from another lab group squirted over two desks to hit them in the eye... And then, one time when my colleague was doing methane bubbles...").

Category:

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Tags:

• rocket
• fuel
• explosion
• chemistry
• accident
• wrong
• boom
• fun
• skin
• of
• my
• teeth
• oxidizer
• catalyst
• activation
• energy
• fire

[ChemManTCAP]

Ah Yes potassium Chlorate and sugar plus sulfuric acid as a catalyst. Pretty fun when you don't put it in a glass bottle!

[wonderingmind42]

@ChemManTCAP Oh, come one...Even better in the glass bottle! I still crack up every single time I see that last piece of glass pop off, like an afterthought!

[adriiPortillo]

this one is easy: potassium chlorate, sugar, and the drops where of concentrated sulfuric mixture.

[TheMilehigh15]

@wonderingmind42 it's come on not come one dumb ass

[MrkBO8]

ha ha - Do you know how to pick a good chemist? He/she is the one with two eyes and ten fingers

[adindrecaj]

So many smart people >.> i wish i had science smarts xD

[mrn123able]

wath mades violet its potassio the rest i dont know it

[syndetic]

Holy exothermic reactions, Batman. Interesting how some compounds and elements react with each other so violently. It's definitely got the C-O-N-S thing going on there (thanks, Doc) with the last 2 ingredients. I wonder how much the potassium chlorate added.

[DXD181]

zinc sulfur and water

[zillionz]

Glad you rethought? You're dead lucky you rethought... it would have blasted the skin off your face instantly and melted those polypropylene safety glasses onto your eyeballs... nice reaction though.

[greatkeyboardwarrior]

and where do i get this bong and beep and beerr

[50asian50white]

I call that a success.

[mindofganza]

My guess, potassium chloride, water, sulfuric.