Explosives

Before Greg left on his mission I managed to get him to give me the secret ingredient to gunpowder, Potassium Nitrate, commonly known as salt peter. Potassium Nitrate is a strong oxidizer so all you need to do is mix it with a good source of fuel and a catalyst and away you go. In case you're interested, salt peter is a natural byproduct from the anaerobic decomposition of manure. If you flip over a very old cow pie, the white powder underneath of it is saltpeter. Back in the old days when everyone used outhouses I guess it wasn't all that unusual to be walking down the street and someones old outhouse would spontaneously explode.

I guess they actually fed the stuff to soldiers in first world war because it prevented them from getting an erection. They didn't want their soldiers distracted by those pretty European girls. From what I've heard it didn't really work all that well. For me, I had a much better plan in mind for my Potassium Nitrate. I made countless batches of gun powder in my lab. Back in those days you could buy Potassium Nitrate in any drug store. You can't do that anymore. I would mix up a batch of gun powder and make my own fuses and then roll the gun powder up in newspapers and make my own fire crackers. They were quite spectacular. I was never able to get the powder to make a real powerful crack like I figured it should, it was more of a whoomf. I have since learned that the secret to fast burning black powder is to mill it in a ball mill (rock tumbler) for a few days with ceramic balls and it will be real good stuff. I even made a pipe bomb once but I was too scared to blast it off. I wonder where that pipe bomb is today? I would feel real bad if someone got hurt. Mom probably threw it in the garbage like she did Greg's nitroglycerin.

What I did manage to make was real good touch powder. That stuff made a real bang. I borrowed some iodine crystals one day from the school chemistry lab and dissolved it into ammonia. The powder that precipitates out is trinitroiodide and is very similar to trinitrotoluene (TNT). It is very sensitive and will blow up just by touching it and hence it's common name as touch powder. The beauty is that when it is wet the powder is harmless so you can stick it in keyholes, under toilet seats or anywhere else your imagination can come up with. Once it dries it becomes extremely sensitive and may just literally scare the poop out of that guy sitting on the toilet seat. There was a large heating duct that passed through my lab and it was the perfect place to dry chemicals. I had a petri dish of touch powder up on the heat duct drying one day (or maybe it was Greg's it is so hard to remember details) and when I took it down to look at it, it exploded right in my face. There is no shrapnel or anything so the explosion is harmless but my ears were ringing for a very long time.

To get the precipitant out of the solution I would filter the ammonia through toilet paper. Since that left all the precipitant on the toilet paper it was very convenient to just to roll up the toilet paper and let the little ball dry out. One day I had a little ball of the stuff drying out on top of the fridge. Some time during the night it dried enough so that when the fridge turned on the vibration was enough to trigger the reaction and it exploded during the night. Mom went running out into the kitchen just in time to see hundreds of little pieces of purple toilet paper raining down all over the kitchen. When the reaction goes the end product is purple and it leaves a large purple stain all over everything. Fortunately, iodine sublimes at room temperature so the stain disappears over the next few days.

Another time Mom and Dad had people over for a party so I put touch powder along the sidewalk that leads to our back door. No one ever used our front door so I was hoping that I would get a few people when they left after the party. Unfortunately someone ratted me out and told Mom and Dad so when the party was over they had everyone leave out the front door. I was so disappointed. The side walk leading to the back door ran alongside the house and right underneath Mom and Dads bedroom window. The following morning the milk man showed up to deliver milk to our back door. The poor guy hit everyone of my pieces of touch powder. According to Mom there was a "bang", "bang", "bang, bang". The poor guy was probably quite scared to come to our house after that.

By far my favorite touch powder story is Jeff Gregson. Jeff was a bully who tormented me mercilessly in high school. By the time I got to high school most people had matured to the point that no one teased me anymore and life was for the most part pretty good. The one exception was Jeff Gregson. He was still quite immature and he loved to tease me every chance he got. To make things worse he was very popular and always had the prettiest girlfriends. One bit of satisfaction is that his girl friend ended up marrying a nerd in the end. Kind of like Lisa did, she was very popular in High School. I digress. I decided to get my revenge on Jeff in the only way I knew how. I took a huge piece of my touch powder to school. Understand that a piece of this stuff the size of a BB will scare the wits out of you. Something the size of a pea will make your ears ring. I took a piece the size of a marble. During math class I asked to be excused and I put my little bomb into Jeff Gregsons locker. After class I rushed out into the hallway to relish in my revenge. For my kids in California, when I say hallway I'm not talking about the outdoor "hallways" that we have in our schools, this is indoors, it's dark and dingy and lined on both sides with metal lockers from floor to ceiling. They are crowded with so many people that you have a difficult time wedging your way through to your next class. The noise is also deafening with everyone talking. Amid this chaos, Jeff opened his locker door and threw his book up onto the top shelf where my surprise was waiting. The explosion was extremely loud and greatly magnified by the rows of metal lockers that continued to resonate. Everyone went deathly silent and the only sound was the sustained high pitched ringing that was in my ears or perhaps it was coming from the rows of metal lockers. As the high pitched ringing sound began to fade away Jeff broke the silence with a very loud "HOLY SH*T". Cardston of course was a Mormon town with at least 90% of the students being Mormon that exclamation just added to the shock on everyone's faces. It was one of my proudest moments but unfortunately I didn't dare claim credit for fear of reprisal. I will claim credit now, I scared the crap out of Jeff Gregson.

I love to see things explode and I've often envied Michaels job in the army when he was the demolitions guy. How fun would that be to blow up bridges and the like. How do you get a job like that? Some day I've got to figure out how to make C4. That seems like one of the best inventions ever made.