Tweet
I'm bored and most of the college has gone home for Easter (I'm Orthodox, ours won't be for another three weeks or so). So there aren't many people around, which means...YEP! No witnesses for idiotic hijinks!
A bunch of my roommate's friends got the idea of setting off condom-bombs for entertainment. A condom-bomb being a free, cheap Lifestyles condom, thoughtfully provided by the basketfull in our bathroom, inflated by spraying it full of deodorant and cologne, then taken outside and placed on the grass (it's been raining on and off all night). Roll up a paper towel into a "fuse," stick one end under the condom, and light it. Then run.
It doesn't actually explode, it just sprays fire around from the hole initially burned in the latex. As the hole grows, the flame finds more outlets and gradually turns into a smaller, conventional blaze before withering away in a final gasp of toxic fumes.
Yes, I watched; I wasn't sure what it would do, so I watched from a heckuva distance away, but I watched. It occurred to me that this was a remarkable demonstration of the different kinds of intelligence: the ingenuity needed to think up such a scheme, combined with the lack of sophistication needed to find it amusing after the fifth time and the lack of common sense to ignore the safety risks in hanging around a few feet from burning chemicals.
Then it came to me, with the keen wasted insight of my obsessive autistic mind, that there were very simple ways to improve the design. I know salt burns with a colored flame, and sugar leads to a more sustained burn than the brief flareout of alcohols. A little wikipedia for chemistry and the history of pyrotechnics, a little cautious experimentation, and one could conceivably create modestly impressive fireworks out of ingredients available to bored college students.
This is a largely academic question since I sense that these guys have already gotten bored and have now switched to stomping on plastic easter eggs trying to make them pop, but would such an implementation be a valid use of science to enrich our lives or a reckless misuse of our gifts? What would you do in such a situation? Discuss.
But first note that all discussion should be facetious in tone, as I am not actually going to encourage behavior that could result in brush fires and/or brain damage.
A bunch of my roommate's friends got the idea of setting off condom-bombs for entertainment. A condom-bomb being a free, cheap Lifestyles condom, thoughtfully provided by the basketfull in our bathroom, inflated by spraying it full of deodorant and cologne, then taken outside and placed on the grass (it's been raining on and off all night). Roll up a paper towel into a "fuse," stick one end under the condom, and light it. Then run.
It doesn't actually explode, it just sprays fire around from the hole initially burned in the latex. As the hole grows, the flame finds more outlets and gradually turns into a smaller, conventional blaze before withering away in a final gasp of toxic fumes.
Yes, I watched; I wasn't sure what it would do, so I watched from a heckuva distance away, but I watched. It occurred to me that this was a remarkable demonstration of the different kinds of intelligence: the ingenuity needed to think up such a scheme, combined with the lack of sophistication needed to find it amusing after the fifth time and the lack of common sense to ignore the safety risks in hanging around a few feet from burning chemicals.
Then it came to me, with the keen wasted insight of my obsessive autistic mind, that there were very simple ways to improve the design. I know salt burns with a colored flame, and sugar leads to a more sustained burn than the brief flareout of alcohols. A little wikipedia for chemistry and the history of pyrotechnics, a little cautious experimentation, and one could conceivably create modestly impressive fireworks out of ingredients available to bored college students.
This is a largely academic question since I sense that these guys have already gotten bored and have now switched to stomping on plastic easter eggs trying to make them pop, but would such an implementation be a valid use of science to enrich our lives or a reckless misuse of our gifts? What would you do in such a situation? Discuss.
But first note that all discussion should be facetious in tone, as I am not actually going to encourage behavior that could result in brush fires and/or brain damage.
ACK!
. I would never do this today.
Comment