As a teen my dad had this box full of ancient shotgun shells. The ones made out of thick paper before they made them out of plastic.
I used to cut them open with a kitchen knife to get to the powder. It’s a miracle one didn’t go off in my hands.
I tried to repeat Feynman’s famous “dip hands in water and then in benzene, and then set them on fire” experiment but chickened out at the last minute. Hands were substituted with a sheet of paper, and then set on fire. Oh, and we used toluene instead.
Then, as it was merrily burning, I decided to pour some more toluene onto the flames. From a 2-litre bottle. I swear to god I saw the flames running up the stream of liquid and almost all the way into the bottle before yanking it away. Not sure what would have happened if it had reached all the way, but definitely nothing good.
This thread has me thinking, “Boys are stupid!” and “Gosh, us guys are lucky to be alive!” and “What is it with boys and fire?”
A friend made napalm (Tide, gasoline and aluminum filings) burned right pretty… for a long time! I have participated in “What Burns?” Parties (where a bunch of bored college students get together, build a campfire and try to set various things on fire. A masking tape ball is something what burns. Smells like hell, though. In all fairness it was mostly an excuse to sit, half-snockered on Old Milwaukee and watch a campfire.
Another time in HS we had read somewhere that off-ramps were actually designed to allow cars to take them at twice the listed speed (through banking). So… one friend with three others as passengers, decided one night to test that theory in his 1974 Ford Torino. We hit a ramp rated at 25 mph at 50, no problem, and kinda fun. So we tried it again, at 75… we made it, but it was NOT fun.
I have a theory: I died at some point in my teens, and this is my afterlife!
I was at my friend’s house and we were setting off firecrackers. Unfortunately, we ran out of matches, but fortunately there was a Zippo available. Unfortunately, there was no fluid in it. Fortunately, there was Deep Woods Off. Unfortunately, I got it on my hands when I was spraying it into the lighter. Fortunately, it worked, unfortunately it worked too well and the lighter and my hand caught fire. I dropped the lighter and ran into the house shaking my hand but by the time I got to the sink, the fire was out. I was fortunate to not get burned.
I experimented to see whether I could teach my body to crack bilateral joints that had previously seemed uncrackable. I chose my shoulder joints. The left one pops all the time now. The right one remains impenetrable. More research must be done!
100 quatloos on the gorn!
Testing the refractive index of water (alt title: Guess how old I am?)
It was late fall, and in history class* I mentioned to the coach I was going frog gigging after school. The discussion got silly, and we all began talking about shooting frogs, rather than gigging them. When I mentioned I had my rifle in my car, he challenged me to take it to the creek as well, and report back on whether I had to shoot above or below the submerged frog to kill it. Sadly, all I could report was that the blast kicked up so much mud and water we never found the frogs afterward.
Will a propane tank explode if shot?
I and some friends got curious about this and headed to the boonies with a partially empty tank. After much scientific discussion, we decided a Desert Eagle was the proper choice for the experiment. Result: Two holes in the tank, and a hissing sound for a few minutes.
*coach taught history after football season
My biggest science-y experiment when I was a kid:
Tape an empty Clorox bleach bottle with the nozzle pointing backward to a roller skate (back then, they were flat and clamped to your shoes, tightened with a key). Put a half cup of rubbing alcohol in the jug and shake it up to vaporize it, then ignite the fumes coming out of the nozzle.
Big, satisfying whoosh of blue flame and the roller skate would cover about a half block before the air ran out in the “combustion chamber”. This led to further experiments that involved poking a hole in the bottom of the Clorox bottle and putting a kitchen funnel in so that the forward motion would scoop air into the bottle. Worked nicely - I got one roll pretty much the entire block.
Then the combustion chamber melted and I lost interest.