Ignoramus9349 wrote:

On 2010-07-05, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:
Ignoramus9349 fired this volley in
:

Volcano fits inside a 12 inch diameter clay flowerpot, shoots lava and
volcano like flames 10 feet in the air, makes pools of white hot
lava. Works great on 4th of july.

I can share a recipe if anyone is interested.

i


Always interested! Please do.

This is my own invention of this year.

The active ingredients are sugar and thermite. The inactive ingredient
is sand and CLAY flowerpot. Thermite is sold on eBay (though per
whatever regulations, it is sold as two powders that the user is
supposed to mix; a wise idea).

I did it the following way: I filled a small plastic drink bottle
(like a small plastic Coke bottle) with sugar.

I cut off the top of a Campbell tomato juice container (a 2 liter pop
bottle would also work). I placed the bottle with sugar inside the
larger bottle, and filled the space between the bottles with thermite.
So, thermite was surrounding the sugar bottle. Of course, none of the
bottles had any sort of caps.

Then I placed this compound device inside a CLAY flowerpot filled with
sand. (I would recommend a dry sand or at least not too wet sand, as
was my case).

I would say, make the amount of sand below the thermite, at least the
diameter of the larger bottle, or maybe a bit more. Similarly, the
flowerpot must be big enough to be 3 times the diameter of the larger
bottle, to allow for plenty of sand to surround the thermite.

I used large sparklers (two just in case) as igniters.

The result exceeded all my expectation. Burning thermite, white hot,
heated the sugar almost instantly, and a big stream of hot, expanding
sugar shot upwards. This was so hot that it immediately ignited upon
contact with air. So, it made a big fountain of fire, I would say 10
feet. The fountain was pretty vertical and contained in space, but
tall. The molten sand made lava and the "volcano" ended up as a large
hole in sand, glowing white hot.

It really looked like a volcano eruption. It lasted for, perhaps, 5-8
seconds. The white hot pool of lava inside glowed for perhaps 3
minutes.

The kids were very impressed and a girl asked me later what kind of
scientist I was.

I kept the kids appx. 30 feet away.

So you didn't shoot video of this???