Doug Yowza wrote:
>
> On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, Paul Braun wrote:
>
> > These little childhood adventures are good for you. Taught me more than
> > aimlessly wandering about town every weekend.
>
> Yeah, I'm amazed I survived some of the experiments I performed as a kid.
> With the supercomputers and high-end graphics workstations we all have on
> our desks now, you'd think that some *really* life-like simulations could
> be written that would allow kids to make all of the same mistakes we did,
> but sans scar tissue. We still need a good smellovision device to give
> them a good sense of singed eyebrows, though.
Well, in grades 6-8 I was playing with exolosives. My friend and I
were interested in rockets, but we couldn't afford the Estes kits.
So we built from scratch, starting with first principles. But of
course the starting point in rockets is also the starting point in
explosives -- good old black powder. So we branched off in both
directions. Recipes were still available in the public libraries in
those days, chemistry textbooks and government publications. I got
a couple of burns, so did my partner, we were lucky because we didn't
always follow the rules that well -- making rocket fuel out of sugar
and potassium nitrate in a saucepan on the stove can turn the stove
to shrapnel if it gets too hot, ours didn't. (We should have been
using a double boiler, but Bob's mother wouldn't let us use hers and
my mother didn't own one). Nowadays, of course, it's difficult to
get many of the books or raw materials we used back in the Sixties.
(But I nowadays know enough first principals to get or make many of
the raw materials we used to buy at the drugstore, potassium nitrate
and several of its chemical cousins being among the main things our
maternal government doesn't want us to have). Nowadays I also know
a bit more safety procedure as well.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram_at_cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
Received on Thu Jan 14 1999 - 23:13:49 GMT