After reading Bruce Schneier ‘s interview with TSA Administrator Kip Hawley I started thinking of all the explosives used in recent terrorist plots and how silly they were.  As a kid, I loved going into the woods and playing with all sorts of dangerous stuff which of course included fireworks, gas cans, hair spray, propane tanks, etc.  What I learned was that it’s a lot harder to get things to explode than you think.  If any of these terrorist had a background in chemistry or even played with anything dangerous as a kid, they would have realized how silly they were as well.

I plan on posting about explosives and how they were used in the terrorist attacks tomorrow, but in the mean time, I thought it would be fun to share some of the lessons I learned as a child through trial and error.  First off, a word of warning:   

Do not try any of this at home.  The experiments were done by an idiot.  None of it is legal.  I’m lucky to have my fingers and some of the hair I lost never grew back.  Scar tissue isn’t as strong as regular tissue.

I remember one of the first little experiments I did as a kid involved the lawn mower’s gas can.  Several attempts to use gasoline to replicate those awe inspiring car explosions from action movies failed time and time again.  The only result I could get was a simple fire that often proved difficult to put out. 

It’s kind of funny the safety controls I employed at age 12.  My love of danger was superseded by my desire to live and stay out of trouble.  For example, one of the first things I learned was remote detonation systems.  The first one I employed was a catapult, built from popsicle sticks, a metal spoon, and rubber bands which could launch a cotton ball soaked in alcohol 20 ft.  The catapult itself could even be operated remotely by using a piece of dental floss to release the firing pin.  The way I figured it, I could open a flame a safe distance from my explosive, run to my makeshift bomb shelter (a foxhole), launch the catapult, and wait for the explosion.  My ignition systems advanced over the years to electrical (steel wool, 9V batteries, and phone cord), 12 gauge shotgun shells minus the lead shot, and tracer rounds (regular bullets do nothing, you need an incendiary round). 

My experiments always started with small trial runs. The simple process I employed had numerous benefits, such as teaching me how to construct proper firebreaks, that gravel roads don’t burn but they do throw significant amounts of shrapnel, and why the military loves foxholes.

The first time I got an explosion occurred by accident.  I was very disappointed after another failed experiment.  As I sat there next to an empty gas can waiting for a fire to go out, I was playing with strike anywhere matches on the empty gas can when to my surprise it exploded and launched itself to the other side of the field.  I lost all the hair on my knuckles and had now had a mystery to solve.

I can’t imagine what my dad must have thought when I started asking all these questions, but he explained to me how a combustion engine works.  Either a carburetor or fuel injection systems mix gasoline with oxygen to form a gas which is ignited by a spark plug at specific intervals to propel a car.  He also explained that if a car’s gas tank could explode then it would not be safe to drive.  Without being properly mixed with an oxidant, gasoline does not detonate, but rather it deflagrates, or burns.

Experimenting with a car battery charger, a glass beaker, some balloons, and water was also a source of immense fun.  At the time, I hadn’t taken any chemistry classes and thought I was collecting pure hydrogen in my balloons.  In my mind, I was making mini-Hindenburg’s.  I would take them out to my fort and blow them up.  Those made some nice explosions.  It wasn’t until a later experiment that I learned I was collecting oxygen in addition to hydrogen through electrolysis.

That later experiment occurred when I discovered dad’s acetylene tanks (he’s a jeweler and has a torch for soldering). At first I was disappointed.  Balloons filled with only acetylene barely did anything.  But then I found that if I mixed in some pure oxygen from the other tank in a 2:1 ratio of oxygen to acetylene, you could produce an explosion with a shock wave that could be felt from 50 ft. away.  It literally sounded like a stick of TNT. 

Over the years I grew more and more brave.  I don’t know what my poor parents must have thought.  At age 15, I printed off an anarchist cookbook and unintentionally left before it was done printing.  The printer was simply out of paper, and later that night when dad put some more in, out popped a page on making napalm from gasoline and styrofoam.  They have also never asked me how the metal window screen in my room melted in one corner.  I don’t know how I would have told them it was due to a freak accident when I was making my first accurate time delay fuse using slow burning gunpowder, cardboard strips that were coiled and soaked in wax, and a tuna can.

Looking back at some of the stuff I did from age 10 to 16, I would have made an excellent engineer, scientist, or lawyer.  I built all kinds of things, always figured out how they worked, and argued my way out things that get people sent to Guantanamo :)