Thermite ingredients

I don’t actually plan on making any thermite but I recently saw a thing on the internet that told how it could be done. Now according to this online article, thermite only has two ingredients (which I won’t list here - if you want to be a terrorist you need to show some initiative).

But I was watching an episode of Mythbusters where they made thermite and they said there was a third ingredient that was necessary. And, like me, they concealed the identity of this ingredient.

Obviously, anything you read on the internet can be complete bullshit. On the other hand, Mythbusters might have made up the part about the third ingredient to keep people from trying to make thermite at home. A third possibility is that both were semi-correct; you can make basic thermite with just two ingredients but adding a third ingredient will make it more powerful.

Any chemists here who can set me straight?

You need a magnesium ribbon, or some other source of intense heat to get the reaction going. Not sure why all the secrecy is needed here: it’s a reaction every A-level chemistry student in the UK gets to witness.

Thermite needs an initiator to ignite. You can’t just strike a match to it. So it usually has additional materials added to insure successful ignition of the mixture.

We made thermite in freshman chemistry in college. It was awesome.

The same prof liked to fill balloons with hydrogen and then poke them with a stick that had a lit match on the end.

(I hear his “demonstrations” have now been banished to the parking lot.)

I had a professor do the hydrogen balloon stunt in a classroom. Better than a cup of coffee in the morning.

Have I shown sufficient initiative by visiting Wikipedia?

YouTube also has several videos of thermite reactions, including some homemade thermite ignited by a standard magnesium “sparkler” firework.

There’s really nothing secret about thermite.

So that was thermite. I was at the Maker’s Faire in San Mateo this weekend and some chemistry dude in a lab coat gave a demo using a strip of magnesium as a fuse. That is one hell of a reaction…

Gutenberg just put a newly scanned book on the site last week.

Endless Amusement A Collection of Nearly 400 Entertaining Experiments published 1847.

It has numerous rocket recipes. Fireworks people.

I once made a version of thermite that replaced the rust with Manganese Dioxide- the reaction was so fast that we used it as flashpowder!

I read that article and found it didn’t answer my question. They say that thermite compunds can be made with two ingredients - and then refer to other ingredients that are also added to it.

It’s aluminum and rust. That’s in the article (though they call ‘rust’ iron (III) oxide) and it’s pretty much everywhere else, too, so stop being so coy.

It’s essentially one of the most spectacular demonstrations of redox chemistry.

All you need is a metal oxide and an elemental metal that is more reactive than the one bound up as the oxide.

Give it some energy, to push it over the activation energy bump, and watch them have a little party as they fight for the oxygen (or rather, the electrons - the reactive metal reduces the less reactive one).

The most practical use for this is to create molten iron in situ without having to melt it yourself - this sort of redox chemistry is enormously exothermic.

The two things you need are not necessarily specific - you could make a thermite mixture with any two metals that have a difference in reduction potential, as long as they both formed stable oxides. Iron and aluminium tend to be used because they are relatively cheap and abundant, and aluminium has several properties that make it ideal for use as the reducing agent - ease of handling due to its oxide layer being chief among them.

Other ingredients can be added for specialised purposes - like using copper oxide instead of iron oxide, or adding alloying metals that will end up in the molten product to give it specific properties, for example. It really is just two products though, with various flavours - just like a cake mixture. Sometimes you want chocolate chips in there, but it doesn’t change the basic recipe all that much.

(and yes, I do consider chemistry to be baking - cooks are merely applied chemists!)

If only for this,

'Cause no matter how much you put in a pile they never reacts energetically!

CMC fnord!
I’m kinda happy that the Wiki page on thermite doesn’t have recipes … the page on flash on the other hand :eek:!

I wasn’t seeking to be coy but I’ve seen threads closed for less than this.

I’m now trying to think of a reason a terrorist would use thermite instead of just blowing shit up.

Well, the CIA used nanothermite shaped charges to bring down the WTC because fire has never, and will never, melt steel.

(Also, DA JOOZ!)

Okay, assuming we’re allowed to discuss specific ingredients, was barium nitrate the mystery ingredient on Mythbusters?

Nemo, probably. I can’t remember the episode specifically, but for extra incendiary effect it was likely Ba(NO3)2. It decomposes when heated to form, among other products, elemental oxygen, so the result is similar to what happens when you mix potassium chlorate and sugar and put a match to it - you’re just providing an extra source of O2 for the main reaction.

It was the Hindenberg episode.

Who needs recipes?

You can buy a 5 pound package of unmixed thermite, complete with a magnesium lighting ribbon, for $25 online, and have it shipped to your house.