In message <20030612202840.92397.qmail_at_web10305.mail.yahoo.com>, Ethan Dicks wr
ites:
>--- Alexander Schreiber <als_at_thangorodrim.de> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 06:51:43PM -0400, TeoZ wrote:
>> > I worked at a company for over a year that did work with
>> > liquid oxygen... Liquid o2 spilled on anything organic and
>> > allowed to seep into it can be very explosive...
>>
>> Combustible substances (saw dust, cotton, ...) soaked with liquid oxygen
>> were sometimes used as explosive (called oxyliquit or somesuch).
>
>There's some comments to that effect on George Gobel's web page about
>accelerating charcoal grill lighting with LOX... He cautions the
>experimentacious reader to have an ignition source (he uses a cigar,
>IIRC) present amongst the briquettes to avoid turning them into
>latent detonation devices.
>
>His page _used to be_ at http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/~ghg/ , but there's
>a comment now from earlier this year about its removal. :-(
Well, I can't help myself throwing in a couple of (albeit continued
off-topic) anecdotes. The first comes from my dad when he worked
for General Dynamics in Fort Worth, TX. It seems that someone was
there demonstrating some of the properties of LOX. Apparently,
he poured some on the alphalt and then threw a brick at it from
a distance. Dad says that it shook dust off the rafters in the
factory.
The other anecdote relates to Gobel's former page. He talked about
a graduate student who talked him into doing it one more time "for
the cameras." It turns out he was my office-mate when I was a
grad student at Purdue. My favorite memory comes from the semester
he was teaching the COBOL course. There were inevitably long
lines of students with questions during his office hours during
which I couldn't get much done. So instead of twiddling my
thumbs I started helping his students out too. Of course it
was all worthwhile when a cute redhead came back for help a
few more times.
Brian L. Stuart
Received on Thu Jun 12 2003 - 21:02:00 BST