"Rich Grise" wrote in message
...
Ignoramus18541 wrote:
On 2010-11-28, Steve B wrote:
We go on dry lakes that are/were used for strafing and bombing practice.
We
are always finding weird pieces of whatnot. For the longest time, we
have been finding a light metal grey bar, about an inch square, and
eight
inches
long. The other night, we were camping, and tossed a sliver of it on
the
fire.

It was magnesium. Good thing we didn't toss the entire bar.

I have a jar of magnesium shavings and I often burn it for kids
entertainment. While, I would say, it is fun to watch, I would not
call it spectacular. I think that your 1x1x8" bar would make a fun
little fire, but nothing beyond this, unless you converted the whole
mass into shavings. Then it would be just a bigger fire.

We recently had a customer order some magnesium parts; a couple of
machinists were burning some chips, and they poured water on it and it
flared up! Evidently Mg burns hot enough to actually extract the O2 from
2H2O or whatever; unfortunately we didn't have a CO2 fire extinguisher
on hand, or I'd have checked if Mg would even eat CO2.

Anybody ever tested that?

I haven't, but extinguishers for magnesium fires contained a black product
much like sand way back when. They may be different now.
My experience was back in the late 50's, early 60's, when I was employed in
a missile facility. Many of the components for the missile (Sergeant) were
made of magnesium.

We had one magnesium fire in the largest lathe in the shop, a 48" sliding
gap bed LeBlond. It was extinguished by the black material. Unfortunately,
I did not witness the event as it occurred on the opposite shift.

Harold