Creating Hell in a Pop Bottle

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Uploaded by on Aug 22, 2010

Hydrogen Oxygen has an adiabatic flame temperature of about 3000 degrees kelvin, thats about half the temperature of the surface of the Sun. Question is... just for fun, can you put that into a pop bottle!

Previously I've shown other fuel air burns, one similar to that used in most internal combustion engines (butane air), and the other as one of the more common rocket fuels (hydrogen oxygen). Both release lots of energy when they burn, which is of course what makes them suitable as fuels.

The hydrogen oxygen burn though is particularly fascinating as it only produces water as an 'exhaust', further it produces very little water! Indeed to fill a bottle with hydrogen and oxygen you only need to turn about 0.5g of water into H2 and O2, and of course when you burn it you only recreate that half gram of water.

To make life even more interesting, to actually do the electrolysis I use a 12 volt Li-ion polymer battery, very similar to those used in most laptops today, simply so folk can visualise in a very simple way the energy content in these everyday objects. Indeed the energy content is significantly higher as only a fraction of the energy I draw from this battery actually goes into creating the H2 and O2, while probably the majority goes into heating up the electrolysis solution.


Now when H2 and O2 burn, there is actually a reduction in the number of molecules of gas, which would, if all other conditions were the same actually produce a reduction in pressure, however the temperature of the exhaust gas is not the same, it goes from about 300K to 3000K which in a confined system would increase the pressure from about 1 to 10 atmospheres. This is getting close to the failure threshold of these bottles, and also represents a significant rate of release of energy.- caution is required, and this really isn't something you should be trying unless you really know what you are doing.

Free DL @
http://www.mediafire.com/?h1u5tqwsz4ilwa8

High speed camera used was a casio exilm EX-FC100. On paper it can do 1000fps, but with lousy resolution. The video here is about 240fps, thats about 1/10th speed, but seeing as the cameras costs about the same as a regular mini digital camera (~200bucks) it not so bad.

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  • oh noes.... did thunderf00t just say "degrees" Kelvin?

    Come on, didn't expect that here >_>

  • I have a Hydroflux Welder that uses a Hydrogen Oxygen mixture as it's fuel. Last year, I filled a balloon with the gas mixture and dropped a lit match onto it in the bathtub.The explosion was impressive. My wife came running in to see what I had done. I'm not allowed to do it again.

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  • This is easily the COOLEST video I've watched all week :D

    Thank you Thunderf00t! Keep the science comin'!

  • fucking scientology ad!

  • @4:37 is the guy whereing goggles there? Or are they just glasses.

  • @richardwasserman AAwwww, but you were just having fun. But atleast you didn't fill the bath tub and blow it up under water. Never do that unless you need a reason to get a new tub.

  • @UjwalHeadShot I didn't get it... what's so funny about that?

  • My name is Kelvin. I feel special when I read all the comments.

  • You don't say degrees Kelvin because degrees indicates a special type of scale.

    Take for example, Fahrenheit. It was actually scaled in brine water to achieve 180 degrees between melting and boiling point. 180 degrees is a convenient number for designing simple devices (IE a half circle). Celsius is simular except 100 degrees was placed between melting and boiling (like the rest of the SI system). Kelvin is used because radiation systems emit/absorb hit based on absolute temp(K).

  • @richardwasserman You have nice wife. My wife would kick me out of the house if I do that.

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