The case of the exploding stairs

7/19/2011 12:44 AM EDT

Hilarious! I remember in school days one mischievious boy dropped hydrochloric solution on his pant and it was a big laughter as there was a big hole in the pant.

7/20/2011 3:39 AM EDT

When I was at school we still had some classrooms where the desks had lift-up lids. Some careful application of wet nitrogen tri-iodide under the lid meant that when the next person put the lid down there was a nice bang and wisp of purple smoke.

7/22/2011 6:03 PM EDT

Reminds me of a time back in high school when someone dribbled small drops of ammonium tri-iodide on the floor of the shower room when everyone else was out at PE. As I remember, a bit also made it onto the seat of a toilet. By the time PE was over the stuff had dried. You can imagine the effect it had on bare feet on the way to the showers as well as to the unfortunate soul who was the first to use the commode...

7/22/2011 7:02 PM EDT

I read about NI3 when I was about 12 years old and, being a troublemaker, made a batch with a friend of mine. We spread some on his front porch and let it dry for an hour, but we were disappointed by it because it didn't seem to do much. We chucked the rest of it on his garage floor. We didn't realize that it would take a few hours to dry on a cool, damp fall day. When his brother rode his bicycle into the garage a few hours later, it exploded and filled the place with purple smoke (actually iodine vapor). He was unhappy. No word on how the mailman fared when he walked on the porch as there were no witnesses.

A coworker from many years ago got into trouble in high school when he and a friend made a batch of NI3 in the chemistry lab and poured it on the janitor's dust mop. The poor guy had no idea why his mop exploded when he put it down. It would have been fun to see him screaming and running down the hall toward the exit with a burning mop.

7/22/2011 7:24 PM EDT

We had a kid in a summer AP science class in '64 make up a batch, nice and wet, and pack it into a 10 ml vial to take home with him. As he screwed the Bakelite cap on, a few grains on the threads went off, triggering the entire vial, clenched in his fist, to detonate!

Huge purple cloud, hand totally black, instructor totally white... As all were panicking and searching for a first-aid kit and a phone to call an ambulance, the troublemaker finally comes out of shock enough to start flexing his hand. "Guys, wait - I'm OK!"

Danny had a sore hand, as if he caught a fast baseball barehanded, but that was it. All we found of the vial was the cap, with the glass threads inside. The shockwave was so fast, it left no shards of glass at all...

7/22/2011 9:57 PM EDT

I made a batch of NI3 in my freshman year of HS, which I had endless fun with. I later wrote up my experiences for a college humor class... http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/pyrotech/NI3incid.html

7/23/2011 12:43 AM EDT

I also discovered the joys of nitrogen triiodide in high school.

Having decanted (some might say stolen) a small quantity of ammonium hydroxide from the chemistry storeroom, I stashed this key ingredient in my desk.

Somehow I forgot about it at the end of class. Next period, a student discovered my container and took it up to our chemistry teacher. "Mr. H, what's this?" she asked.

Ignoring the safety warnings he had so carefully instilled in us, Mr. H opened the jar, and--instead of carefully wafting a bit of vapor to his nose--took a big whiff. Of pure ammonia. I wasn't there, but I heard several reports of the look on his face.

Needless to say, Mr. H knew exactly where I sat, and later interrogated me. I feigned innocence, but I think only his embarrassment at not following protocol saved me from a trip to the principal's office.

7/23/2011 12:53 AM EDT

I made some in 9th grade (jr HS) and gave a few drops to one of the more delinquent kids to put on the sole of his shoe. He managed to set it off in front of the principals office. Still not sure how he managed to keep my name out of it. Later, I put some on my shoe for English, I chickened out and held my foot off the floor for most of the class. I was a surprised as anyone when it went off.
Sr year of HS in Anchorage, I took a vile into my Shakespeare class and while the teacher was out of the room, went up the her podium and dropped a glob into a crack in the base. She came back in and being pretty cool, looked around the room and saw my friend Eric turning bright red. She didn't know what was going on, but looked at him and said "you did it" then put the podium aside. The next morning, I went into the room, walked up to the podium and rubbed my gloved hand over the mixture and walked out. I don't know what the poor substitute teacher said about that.
That fall, I went off to college and my parents kept complaining about explosions in my room. Finally they set one off while in the room. The bottle had exploded and sent drops all over a large piece of cardboard I was using for a rug (the house was not finished). The chemical is very unstable when dry, but pretty safe in small quantities.
I also played a bit with silver acetylide Ag2C2 which is made by passing acetylene through a silver nitrate solution. That stuff is similar: OK when wet, feather sensitive when dry but very scary. It goes off with a real flash and bang.

7/23/2011 4:54 AM EDT

That "some kind of iodine compound" Murphy is referring to being...pure iodine. In crystal form. That works best. Still have half a bottle from when I made some for my niece, who'd heard all about it and wanted to play with some. We went out in December in suburban Philly with a fairly large batch of it, and smeared some (it's a paste when I make it) over a picnic table. Later, after many games of Tetris, we went out and I hit it with a broom and off it went with a 'pop' and a big cloud of purple smoke. Fun memories!

7/23/2011 2:54 PM EDT

I guess college pranks take on a different perspective when you are in the service. I was in a large barracks, several hundred men, when some loony decided to make an explosive that was unstable when dry. The first person to come across it was a fellow who lived down the hall. He noticed crystals on the pavement, poked them with a blade of grass, and when they blew up they blew grit from the pavement into his eyes and forehead. The next explosion took place when someone picked up the handset on the public telephone. The crystals had been placed on the ear piece. Had they gone of as intended they would have burned his ear and perhaps deafened him. The barracks was cleared and ordinance disposal was sent in to see what was going on. They found 3 of the large commercial sized mayonnaise containers filled with the stuff in a locker. It was conjectured that the threads of at least one jar probably had dry stuff in them. Next time he decided to spread some around had the dry stuff on the threads exploded it would have broken the jar. Then the problem would have been how to clean up the mess before it dried and to make sure all of it was cleaned up.

Yep my experience has a whole different feel from the ones you folks laugh about.

7/23/2011 9:57 PM EDT

Ah yes, I remember it well. I used to make batches of the stuff in high school. We would put it in empty medicine capsules (one of my friends father was a doctor)and during gym class, while we were doing laps, someone would toss out a capsule resulting in a resounding bang and a puff of purple smoke. Also, there was a purple stain on the gym floor. Fortunately the stain faded over time. Again fortunately it is not a very powerful explosive. I had about an ounce of it go off in my hand and the worse damage was a couple of blood blisters. By the way at my high school's 41st reunion (they forgot the 40th) I was given the prize for the mad bomber. Don't think I have only been out of high school for about 41 years, my 55th reunion was two years ago.

7/24/2011 4:05 PM EDT

A buddy of mine, who went to a different high school, had a teacher who tended to bang on his desk with a yardstick. He and his friends finally decided to "cure" this habit. I believe he used something of a mercury fulminate that also became explosive when dry.The next time the teacher banged that yardstick, it blew into slivers.

7/24/2011 4:52 PM EDT

I read about this in an old magazine of my grandfather's, when I was about ten years old, but I could never come up with the ingredients, and forgot about it until this brought it back to mind. Just think, if any of these stunts were done today there would be hundreds of federal agents investigating, and probably jail time for some, as well. Things certainly have changed.

8/12/2011 7:25 PM EDT

Et al,
A friend tells the story of mixing up a batch in his college days. There was a dorm mate who would come back from a bit of drinking in the wee hours and was quite noisy. They packed the lock to his door and waited. He came back, inserted his key and to his surprise the lock spit it back out with a bit of force.

My personal experiences were with a bit more powerful mixture, red fuming nitric should have been harder to obtain, then it was the 1960's...

Take care and be safe
pfb