Gunpowder & Sky

Transcription

I've gathered up some common household ingredients, and a frying pan, because today we're doing some kitchen chemistry. This is the type of cooking that gets me excited because I'm trying out recipes for solid-state rocket fuel. To get started, I'm taking this portable electric burner outside and away from anything flammable. I'll add a frying pan, and set the heat to medium-low. This lid should help it heat faster, and while that's warming up, I'll place one of these plastic cups on a digital scale and turn it on. When the scale has zeroed out the weight of the cup, I'm ready to measure portions of these two ingredients. The black bottle is a stump remover from the garden section of a local hardware store, and I'm using it because it contains Potassium Nitrate. And according to the MSDS, it contains a lot of it. The second ingredient is plain white table sugar and I couldn't resist a little taste before investing it into this experiment. Ok, this recipe calls for a 60/40 mix by weight, and I'm going to make a 100 gram batch, so I'm adding 60 grams of stump remover first, followed by 40 grams of granulated white sugar. That looks good there, so I'll give the cup a little shake to mix the two together, and then try to pour it neatly and evenly into the pre- heated pan. Over the course of about 5 minutes, I'll need to stir the mix up a little so it doesn't burn on the bottom. Not much seems to be happening yet, but after about 8 minutes I can see some of the sugar starting to caramelize into a liquid. At this point I'll need to be stirring and mixing a little more frequently, and as I do, the mixture begins to liquify and clump together, turning a golden brown. Just a couple of minutes later, the entire batch looks like cookie dough, and the white powder is completely mixed in. I'll need some sort of container to hold this in, and I'm thinking these Mega Block Legos might work. At this point, the mixture is just runny enough that it can be coaxed into the container. It takes about 60 grams to fill this red block, and when I've cooked up a little more, I'll add that to the blue one. It's darker in color because it cooked longer, and generally speaking, I think the less it is cooked, the better. There's just a little bit left over, and it's hot, but if I'm careful, I can roll it into a test piece for measuring the burn rate later on. Alright, while those are cooling, I've got one we can light off just to see how it looks. I'll get it started with a propane torch, and when the fuel catches, it throws off a nice little flame, and quite a bit of smoke. This mix is 4 months old and seems to burn a little slow, but it's still a good show. And you can tell by the melting plastic that it does get pretty hot. Ok I just made 3 more batches of fuel that are all a little different. To the yellow one I added 30 grams of water and then turned the heat up to boil the water out. After a couple of minutes, the mix turned to a white mush and was ready when all the water seemed to have cooked out. This method prevented the sugar from caramelizing, but was a little crumbly when dry. I packed that into this yellow LEGO block and set it aside. Another batch was made using a mix of 58% Stump Remover, 29% Sugar, and this time I used 13% Corn syrup, and 30mL water. The water was cooked out the same way as the last, and then about 1 gram of homemade rust powder was added, and stirred in throughly. When it was ready, it looked like a creamy chocolate frosting, and I packed that into the green LEGO. I may have accidentally trapped an air bubble inside. You'll see this explode later when we test it. For my last batch, I sprinkled some red rust into the mix while it was still wet, and like the others, stirred it until the water had evaporated out. This mix kind of looked like a delicious red velvet cake, but I wouldn't recommend eating it. I took samples from each fuel, and measured them all to a length of 1", then timed the burn rates to see how they performed against each other. I was happiest with the batch made with my homemade rust because it burned the fastest. I had a few sample scraps left over that were begging to be burned up, so I did that. And now here we are with 5 samples ready for ignition. Testing the red one, I'm really impressed at how fast it ignites and burns, but a little nervous when it starts spinning out of control. I'm out of there. The blue one lights off just as powerfully, and builds thrust to the point to where it takes off, leaving me in a total whiteout. This yellow one was the un- caramelized version and I got smarter this time by pointing it down to prevent it from taking off like the others. It burned slower than the first two, but the amount of smoke it put off was still incredible! Ok so this green one has the rust in it, and it lit up instantly and then blew up. But did you notice how much faster the burn rate was? That's amazing. For the black one I decided it was a good idea to hold it in place with another cement brick, and that strategy seemed to work. At least this time I didn't get sprayed in the face with spewing hot rocket fuel. Overall I think I'm happiest with these mixtures using the rust. With a different homemade casing that actually has a nozzle, I was able to get a successful rocket launch that I think went a couple thousand feet high. Well that's it for this project. If you like these videos, please subscribe and share with your friends. I appreciate your support. Thanks for watching.