Elementary Production: Thermite Reactions

A Thermite reaction is a single replacement reaction with a reducing metal and a metal Oxide. This reaction is very exothermic, leaving the metal in the metal oxide. This process is, among others, used by railway- workers to "weld" together railways.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• thermite
• iron
• oxide
• zinc
• calcium
• manganese
• copper
• exothermic
• reactivity
• series
• awesome
• chemistry
• interesting
• experiment
• cool
• chemical

[DevilMaster]

So that's what "blur mixed with blur" is! :-D

[mabakken]

@DevilMaster

haha, that's right ;)

[RokSrakaCar]

that's odd! in my case, manganese thermite was very violent... check out my video (big thermite reactions)

[mabakken]

That is strange...did you use the same oxide? MnO2?

[RokSrakaCar]

yes, i did

[mabakken]

Strange. According to the electrochemical series, it SHOULD behave like it did in my video. Any theories?

[GolfingThurnis]

so that's what happened on 9/11

[MrAde9999]

@mabakken maganese burns in small and explodes in big. copper explodes in small but burns in big

[syntheser]

@mabakken

In my opinion, it's strongly depend what kind of aluminium powder did you used. There are various micro meter in size (the smaller size is make the mixture more homogeneous -> more reactive), and there are flake- or sphercial aluminium powders. In pyrotechnical mixtures the various aluminium powders (flake or sphercial) are strongly define the mixture burn rate!

[GWR4079]

and how much did all the oxidising chemicals and the aluminimum and iron powder cost you to do this?

[amourdutigre]

You should try that with Uranium oxide... :-)

[mrhomescientist]

I've done some manganese thermites too, and mine were pretty violent as RokSrakaCar said (two of my videos feature it). I used MnO2:Al in a ratio of 2.42:1 by weight, with 425 mesh aluminum powder. I've found that finer powder makes a huge difference in the speed of reaction, so maybe that's why yours didn't go as quickly?

[Bernler75]

I made one out of Copper(II)oxide and titanium metal, I put it in a tube and left  a crater in my lawn.