On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:03:38 +0100, Java Jive
wrote:



Another was to get an old can, not one that contained anything highly
flammable, something like olive oil would do. Put a centimetre or two
of water in the tin, and boil it until steam is coming out of the top.
Then turn off the gas, and quickly, using oven gloves, replace the lid
making sure it's tight. Stand back and wait. After a while, the can
crumples.

EXPLAIN


Simples.

Our local coffee bar uses steam from the espresso machine to collapse
pop bottles before they are put in the bin for collection by a quite
expensive waste service that charges by volume.

I do remember a letter to one of the papers years ago asking why they
didn't wait until the old people had died off before introducing
decimalisation

:-)


I was away training on D-Day and the quite old & poorly educated
ladies in the canteen had no problems with decimal currency (Been
trained you see) whereas the graduate engineers in the queue just
boggled when their time came to pay.

Derek

"Steve Terry" wrote in message
...
"Andy Champ" wrote in message
. uk...
Mark Carver wrote:
tony sayer wrote:
It seems that in modern Britain, whilst racism is almost a capital
offence, ageism is officially condoned.

Totally agree!. Don't they -ever- think that one day they'll be old
to?..

You don't when you're in your twenties, and that's the root problem.

One of two roots. The other is - why are people that age in charge of
the ad. campaign anyway?
Andy


Gov ministers love giving contracts to quangos run or chaired by
their friends / relatives / children.

Every party since the war has claimed it will reduce quangos when they get
into office, then when they do they realise it's an easy and legal way to
funnel
large quantities of taxpayers money to friends and relatives.

As we don't have any anti-racketeering laws in the UK, our contractual
law is a farce and would be illegal in more civilised countries

Like where?

Z

....and meaningful relevant contributions to a thread.

Z

"james" wrote in message
...
In message , Brian Gaff
writes

Whatever happened to dignity and tolerence?

Same thing that happened to logical, chronological posting! JF

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...
"Java Jive" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:16:24 +0100, geoff wrote:

In message , Cash
?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?@?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.? .?.?.?.?.//.com.invalid
writes

And *WHAT* were your thoughts on 'oldies' when you were in your teens,
twenties, thirties - and possibly forties when you were showing them
how to
use that new fangled invention called the video recorder - or even
early
mobile phones? ;-)

Actually, in my day it was hifi, but, while they needed some advice on
what technical specifications (remember them?) constituted hifi, none
of my parents had any difficulty at all in using such things.

I would have thought that setting up a hi-fi turntable and understanding the
need for a different input for a magnetic cartridge would have flummoxed
most people in the 70s.

HiFi is something the youth of today fail to understand.
They wouldn't buy mp3 players if they knew anything about HiFi.

Run of the mill audio is much better quality (wrt bass, treble and noise)
than was common in the past, at least electrically. A cheapy MP3 player
connected via the headphone socket to a hi-fi amp and speakers is almost as
good as CD.

--
Max Demian

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 02:20:42 -0700 (PDT), Owain
wrote:

On 1 Sep, 00:03, Java Jive wrote:
Another was to get an old can, not one that contained anything highly
flammable, something like olive oil would do. *Put a centimetre or two
of water in the tin, and boil it until steam is coming out of the top.
Then turn off the gas, and quickly, using oven gloves, replace the lid
making sure it's tight. *Stand back and wait. *After a while, the can
crumples.

That one's atmospheric pressure.

Same thing can happen to hot water cylinders :-)

It can! I saw the results in an office kitchen when the plumbed-in hot
water boiler (substitute for a kettle) had been emptied of hot water to
make many cups of coffee and tea in the space of a few minutes. The cold
tap was turned on to refill it. The lid was an airtight fit -- Bang! --
one crumpled boiler! The tea lady who had been innocently using it was
almost as damaged, mentally, as the boiler. She recovered but the boiler
didn't.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 00:26:37 +0100, "Bill Wright"
wrote:


"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:06:19 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller
wrote:

I saw it before it was pulled. It is both humorous and informative.
The humour outweighs any hint of patronisation.

No, that's not possible in today's world. Suppose the film featured a black
person who was depicted as characteristically lazy and stupid, but was very
funny? That wouldn't be allowed would it?

I realised after I posted that one big difference between the Fox
(American) commercial and the BBC one described is that the Fox one had
a voiceover giving instructions and an old lady, and her wires, becoming
confused. There was no one else on screen. It was open to viewers of all
ages to think "I'd be just as confused as her".

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:20:32 +0100, Java Jive
wrote:

Years ago, I used to live in the Gloucester area, and Glyn Worsnip (I
think that was the name) used to write a weekly column in the local
rag.

There is a church in Westgate St missing the top of its spire. IIRC,
what actually happened is that after the war it was deemed unsafe (war
damage?), so the top 10 to 15 feet were removed and replaced by a cap.
What to do with the bit that had been removed? It was re-erected in a
bit of park round the back of the cathedral, near a supermarket
entrance, about a quarter to half a mile away from the original
church.

So, for April Fool's Day, Glyn Worsnip invented this cock 'n' bull
story that actually there was a complete church underneath the park,
with just its spire still showing above the surface. Laughter all
round ... Soon long forgotten in the wider scheme of things.

However, many years later, again around April 1st, he related that
recently he had happened to walk by the spire, and overheard one old
dear telling another about the buried church!

I wonder if Time Team would like to do a dig there?

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:09:42 +0100, james
wrote:

In message , Brian Gaff
writes

Whatever happened to dignity and tolerence?

Same thing that happened to logical, chronological posting! JF

James,
Brian Gaff is blind. His style of posting is dictated by practical
considerations.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

In article ,
lid says...


My stepfather used to teach me science through, say, explaining why
popcorn popped.

EXPLAIN

A favourite trick was to get an old-fashioned tin with a replacable
lid, like a syrup or treacle tin, and punch one hole with a nail
through each of the base and the lid. You then:
1) Remove the lid
2) Seal the hole in the base of the tin with a finger
3) Turn it upside down
4) Fill it with gas from the cooker (gas is lighter than air, so it
goes up into the tin). Er, turn the gas off once you smell gas! That
means it's full!
5) Replace the lid
6) Seal the hole in the lid with another finger (so you're now
sealing both)
7) Turn it the right way up
8) Run out into the garden and place it on something like a brick
9) Light the gas at the lid hole, and stand well back.
After a few seconds the lid goes about 15 feet in the air.

EXPLAIN

Another was to get an old can, not one that contained anything highly
flammable, something like olive oil would do. Put a centimetre or two
of water in the tin, and boil it until steam is coming out of the top.
Then turn off the gas, and quickly, using oven gloves, replace the lid
making sure it's tight. Stand back and wait. After a while, the can
crumples.

EXPLAIN


Why do flour mills explode?


Connect a funnel to a (longish) length of tubing.
Block the bottom of the funnel with a loose plug of tissue and pour
flour into the funnel.
Place a lighted candle on the top of a wall or similar, a couple of
inches from the edge.
Hold funnel against wall and place 7lb biscuit tin or similar over both
candle and funnel, so that funnel is held in place btween tin and wall.
Blow sharply down tubing.
The tin may travel some considerable distance, so stand well clear!


EXPLAIN

--

Terry

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 12:05:53 +0100, Terry Casey
wrote:



Why do flour mills explode?

The same reason that explosions occurred in some cotton mills.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion

Connect a funnel to a (longish) length of tubing.
Block the bottom of the funnel with a loose plug of tissue and pour
flour into the funnel.
Place a lighted candle on the top of a wall or similar, a couple of
inches from the edge.
Hold funnel against wall and place 7lb biscuit tin or similar over both
candle and funnel, so that funnel is held in place btween tin and wall.
Blow sharply down tubing.
The tin may travel some considerable distance, so stand well clear!


EXPLAIN

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

In message , Adrian
writes
james wrote:
In message , Brian
Gaff writes
Can one complain to the ASA about stuff on the BBC?

Naw. Some can whinge about jeopardy posting, though. JF

You're being an arsehole, Brian has no choice about top posting as he's
blind. As you would know if you bothered to ask instead of making snide
comments.

My dear Adrian. Your outrage is wholly understandable; wholly
commendable; and, alas, wholly misplaced. I know more than most about
using the Usenet when blind than most because I have been blind. I used
to use JAWS (IMS: Job Application With Speech) as a Usenet client which
depended on correct usage of the Usenet's attribution carets to be of
any use. I daresay later machines are better but there are still many
thousands of JAWS machines in use out there.

Jeopardy posting used to drive an old friend of mine mad, Richard
Christopher, of the RNIB (he's working on the Moon project and Pelham at
the moment) to drink! So much so that he was moved to send a plea to all
jeopardy posters he encountered requesting that they he encountered. You
can read his plea at:

http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_chr0.htm

I must take issue with you regarding your comment: 'Brian has no choice
about top posting'. Not to put too find a point on it, this is
patronising in the extreme towards blind people and their problems. When
I set out to be playwright I went to lot of trouble to ensure that my
plays would stand on their own merit so I took care to ensure that there
was nothing about the typescript to indicate that I was blind.

I think from the foregoing that I can safely say that my 'arseholeness'
is questionable and that your comment: 'As you would know if you
bothered to ask instead of making snide comments' does cause a certain
well-known phrase about kettles and their colour to spring readily to
mind.

I won't repeat it because I never resort to trotting out insults. They
tend to say more about the insulter rather than the insultee and might
make me look incredibly stupid when I get taken to the cleaners.

Cheers


--
James Follett. http://www.jamesfollett.dswilliams.co.uk
"There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive
feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be
acted out under the guise of virtue." (Erich Fromm)

In article , Max Demian
scribeth thus
"dennis@home" wrote in message
...
"Java Jive" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:16:24 +0100, geoff wrote:

In message , Cash
?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?@?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.? .?.?.?.?.//.com.invalid
writes

And *WHAT* were your thoughts on 'oldies' when you were in your teens,
twenties, thirties - and possibly forties when you were showing them
how to
use that new fangled invention called the video recorder - or even
early
mobile phones? ;-)

Actually, in my day it was hifi, but, while they needed some advice on
what technical specifications (remember them?) constituted hifi, none
of my parents had any difficulty at all in using such things.

I would have thought that setting up a hi-fi turntable and understanding the
need for a different input for a magnetic cartridge would have flummoxed
most people in the 70s.

HiFi is something the youth of today fail to understand.
They wouldn't buy mp3 players if they knew anything about HiFi.

Run of the mill audio is much better quality (wrt bass, treble and noise)
than was common in the past, at least electrically. A cheapy MP3 player
connected via the headphone socket to a hi-fi amp and speakers is almost as
good as CD.

Should get your hearing checked;!..
--
Tony Sayer

Brian is blind and uses a screen reader of some sort.

Bottom posting is a problem when used with a screen reader as it is
difficult to find the content.
It may seem logical to bottom post but that doesn't make it correct once you
understand all the implications.


Same thing that happened to logical, chronological posting! JF

"james" wrote in message
...
In message , "dennis@home"
writes

HiFi is something the youth of today fail to understand.
They wouldn't buy mp3 players if they knew anything about HiFi.

What a strange thing to say! Some folk, myself included, don't want high
fidelity and humping speakers around. I go for convenience. For me sheer
luxury is having an entire 9-hour book reading or several concerts on one
CD.

See, I said people don't understand HiFi.

Headphones, even 99p ones, are usually more HiFi than even the best
speakers.
However mp3 is poor, very poor.

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
...

It can! I saw the results in an office kitchen when the plumbed-in hot
water boiler (substitute for a kettle) had been emptied of hot water to
make many cups of coffee and tea in the space of a few minutes. The cold
tap was turned on to refill it. The lid was an airtight fit -- Bang! --
one crumpled boiler! The tea lady who had been innocently using it was
almost as damaged, mentally, as the boiler. She recovered but the boiler
didn't.

Just as well the thing didn't have a big heater in the bottom or the
opposite could have happened as the water boiled rapidly.
Which reminds me of the cock-up the mythbusters made with the steam cannon
myth.
How they came to the idea that, plugging a cannon and filling it with water,
then heating it to make steam was the same as heating it till it was really
hot and then chucking the water in, I will never understand.
One would do little, the other would work as a cannon needless to say they
choose the wrong one.

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:03:45 +0100, Zimmy wrote:
Like where?

Australia, Canada, New Zealand.

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:16:17 +0100, Dennis@Home explained:

However mp3 is poor, very poor.

So use Ogg Vorbis then

Or if you have the disk space, FLAC.

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:27:49 +0100, Derek Geldard wrote:

Thus leading to the absurdity of a (late) female nominee cabinet
minister saying that IT was "Just a simple manual skill", presumably
like packing veggies in boxes in the fields.

Yes because in the mind of that person, their scope of understanding of
IT skills was limited to switching on a computer, knowing how to click
on the start button to get to Internet Explorer, Outook and Office,
and being able to create a document in Word or a spreadsheet in Excel.

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:34:08 +0100, Max Demian wrote:

A cheapy MP3 player connected via the headphone socket
to a hi-fi amp and speakers is almost as good as CD.

You have failed to consider the quality of the MP3 files themselves.

Files encoded at 320 kbps may sound near CD quality, but the usual
128 kbps most certainly will not.

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:31:20 +0100, Tony Sayer wrote:

And from that generation who kept out the invaders in the 40's.

I thought that was David Vincent in 1967-1968?

"it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut
that he never found.

On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:25:42 +0100, Peter Duncanson
wrote:

The advert should be made in such a way as to appeal to the over 75s.
It should be addressed to them.

"Are you over 75? Yes? Well, you know how you don't have to pay for
the TV licence any more? That's because we're turning the TV off soon.
Confused? Use the extended support network which we assume you have,
or listen to Radio 2 instead. Good-bye."

--

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 06:08:36 +0100, james
wrote:

There was a dreadful series of super market ads that depicted a senile
customer played by Prunella Scales being looked after by smiling,
patronising sales staff.

I don't know if I agree with that. She wasn't portrayed as being
senile at all - she was extremely confident and domineering. Any
smiling by the sales staff was firmly in the "Oh god, what a
nightmare" vein.

The were confused AA customers who knew a man who did.

Similarly, not confused, just people with the intelligence to realise
when some things were beyond their skillset.

If you want patronising, look at the Orange "phone trainers" adverts.
"You're so thick you can't even use your mobile, so we've hired some
six-year-olds to show you how." ISTR there was a considerable backlash
about that.

--

Sorry?
I was asked the question and as I'm supposed to be the font of all knowledge
around here, I thought I'd ask here!

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"james" wrote in message
news
In message , Brian Gaff
writes
Can one complain to the ASA about stuff on the BBC?

Naw. Some can whinge about jeopardy posting, though. JF

In article , Java Jive
wrote:
A favourite trick was to get an old-fashioned tin with a replacable
lid, like a syrup or treacle tin, and punch one hole with a nail
through each of the base and the lid. You then:
1) Remove the lid
2) Seal the hole in the base of the tin with a finger
3) Turn it upside down
4) Fill it with gas from the cooker (gas is lighter than air, so it
goes up into the tin). Er, turn the gas off once you smell gas! That
means it's full!

You couldn't do that now. Modern domestic gas is heavier than air. It
used to be possible to fill a huge plastic bag with the stuff and send
it floating off into the sky, but it's no fun any more.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:09:42 +0100, james
wrote:

In message , Brian Gaff
writes

Whatever happened to dignity and tolerence?

Same thing that happened to logical, chronological posting! JF

James,
Brian Gaff is blind. His style of posting is dictated by practical
considerations.

We get this over and over again, and I wonder, Brian, if it makes you a bit
self-conscious. Would it be a good idea if you amended your signature thus?:
Blind user, so no pictures please, and my reading system dictates top
posting.

Bill

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in
message .myzen.co.uk...
In article , Java Jive
wrote:
A favourite trick was to get an old-fashioned tin with a replacable
lid, like a syrup or treacle tin, and punch one hole with a nail
through each of the base and the lid. You then:
1) Remove the lid
2) Seal the hole in the base of the tin with a finger
3) Turn it upside down
4) Fill it with gas from the cooker (gas is lighter than air, so it
goes up into the tin). Er, turn the gas off once you smell gas! That
means it's full!

You couldn't do that now. Modern domestic gas is heavier than air. It
used to be possible to fill a huge plastic bag with the stuff and send
it floating off into the sky, but it's no fun any more.

Natural gas isn't heavier than air. CH4 = 16 or so, compared to air at about
29, so slightly under half the density. (g/mol, 1 mol = constant volume).

LPG - propane at 44 and butane at 58 are heavier, hence problems in boats
with them.

The tin thing still works.

In message , Bill Wright
writes

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:09:42 +0100, james
wrote:

In message , Brian Gaff
writes

Whatever happened to dignity and tolerence?

Same thing that happened to logical, chronological posting! JF

James,
Brian Gaff is blind. His style of posting is dictated by practical
considerations.

We get this over and over again, and I wonder, Brian, if it makes you a bit
self-conscious. Would it be a good idea if you amended your signature thus?:
Blind user, so no pictures please, and my reading system dictates top
posting.

Well meant but I know what my answer would've been! JF

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...
Brian is blind and uses a screen reader of some sort.

Bottom posting is a problem when used with a screen reader as it is
difficult to find the content.

So how does he know what to reply to?

--
Max Demian

On Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 20:43:19h +0100, Java Jive pondered:

I wonder what the different formulae were/are.

Town gas (synthetic gas) consists primarily of hydrogen (H2) and carbon
monoxide (C0), plus varying proportions of nitrogen (N2) and carbon
dioxide (C02).

Natural gas (earth gas) consists primarily of methane (CH4).

A mercaptan (foul smelling sulfur compound) is added to both town gas
and natural gas as a means to quickly alert people of gas leaks.

Town gas is sold by the therm and natural gas is often sold by the
cubic metre, since town gas may have differing energy
properties due to fluctuations in its composition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therm

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:09:12 +0100, Max Demian wrote:

So how does he know what to reply to?

A better question is, why bother to quote the previous article at all?

In article ,
says...

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009 12:05:53 +0100, Terry Casey
wrote:



Why do flour mills explode?

The same reason that explosions occurred in some cotton mills.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion

I should really have posed the question: Why was smoking forbidden in
flour mills?

However, the experiment would fail if you filled the funnel with cotton
wool ...

.... unless you know of a way to carry out the same experiment for cotton
using materials commonly found in the average household ...

.... I know that 7lb biscuit tins aren't around any more but my timescale
reasonable matched that of the original post ...


Connect a funnel to a (longish) length of tubing.
Block the bottom of the funnel with a loose plug of tissue and pour
flour into the funnel.
Place a lighted candle on the top of a wall or similar, a couple of
inches from the edge.
Hold funnel against wall and place 7lb biscuit tin or similar over both
candle and funnel, so that funnel is held in place btween tin and wall.
Blow sharply down tubing.
The tin may travel some considerable distance, so stand well clear!


EXPLAIN

--

Terry

brightside S9 wrote:

Thomas Newcomen understood that 300 years ago.


.... and for anyone who wants to see it in action, I can thoroughly
recommend Crofton Beam Engines.

http://www.croftonbeamengines.org/about.html

Andy

Java Jive wrote:

Really, I'm very surprised to hear that. I wonder what the different
formulae were/are.

Town gas was largely hydrogen (with a substantial level of carbon
monoxide, which is why it was poisonous) whereas natural gas is largely
methane.

Andy

In message en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart writes
In article , Ivan wrote:
I wouldn't mind betting that there are plenty of people in their sixties'
nudging seventies contributing to this newsgroup who wouldn't mind a pound
for every technical problem they've sorted out for people less than half
their age ;-)

Indeed.

But if we're talking about people one sixth of my age, that could be a
different matter...

But 6 doesn't go into 87

--
geoff

In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"Java Jive" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:16:24 +0100, geoff wrote:

In message , Cash
?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?@?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.? .?.?.?.?.//.com.invalid
writes

And *WHAT* were your thoughts on 'oldies' when you were in your teens,
twenties, thirties - and possibly forties when you were showing
them how to
use that new fangled invention called the video recorder - or even early
mobile phones? ;-)

Actually, in my day it was hifi, but, while they needed some advice on
what technical specifications (remember them?) constituted hifi, none
of my parents had any difficulty at all in using such things.

HiFi is something the youth of today fail to understand.
They wouldn't buy mp3 players if they knew anything about HiFi.

From my experience the youth of today understands very little technical
stuff, the majority know next to nothing about how computers, TV,
radio, cars, (insert what you like) work.


A bit like you then, Dennis


--
geoff

In message , J G Miller
writes
On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:34:08 +0100, Max Demian wrote:

A cheapy MP3 player connected via the headphone socket
to a hi-fi amp and speakers is almost as good as CD.

You have failed to consider the quality of the MP3 files themselves.

Files encoded at 320 kbps may sound near CD quality, but the usual
128 kbps most certainly will not.

However ...

The brain is wonderful at filtering the crappiness, be it sound or the
imperfections on a projected wall. After a while, if you are actually
listening to the music, most of it doesn't matter in day to day life.
People who still hear the reduced quality should either not download
pirated music or listen to something that actually absorbs them


--
geoff

In message , Java Jive
writes
Just in case anybody's actually interested and wants to know ...

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:03:38 +0100, Java Jive
wrote:

My stepfather used to teach me science through, say, explaining why
popcorn popped.

EXPLAIN

Popcorn before cooking is a seed, but the thing that makes it a little
different is that the skin of the seed is virtually impermeable.

To cook it, you place a small amount of oil or fat in a saucepan, just
enough to almost cover the bottom (so that it will, just, cover the
bottom when heated) and enough popcorn to just cover the bottom of the
pan. You then cover it with the saucepan lid (vital!), and put it
over the heat. Within a minute or two, the pan starts to tremble and
roar as all the popcorn pops. Once this is truly over, remove from
the heat and pour the popcorn into something like a colander. Serve
with sea-salt.

So, that's how you cook it, but why does it pop? The seed contains
small amounts of water vapour, which on heating turns to steam,
cooking the 'flour', or whatever you want to call the contents of the
seed, and, building up pressure until it ruptures the seed casing and
turns it inside out, all in a moment.

A favourite trick was to get an old-fashioned tin with a replacable
lid, like a syrup or treacle tin, and punch one hole with a nail
through each of the base and the lid. You then:
1) Remove the lid
2) Seal the hole in the base of the tin with a finger
3) Turn it upside down
4) Fill it with gas from the cooker (gas is lighter than air, so it
goes up into the tin). Er, turn the gas off once you smell gas! That
means it's full!
5) Replace the lid
6) Seal the hole in the lid with another finger (so you're now
sealing both)
7) Turn it the right way up
8) Run out into the garden and place it on something like a brick
9) Light the gas at the lid hole, and stand well back.
After a few seconds the lid goes about 15 feet in the air.

EXPLAIN

The thing here is that gas and air, strictly the oxygen in the air,
are only explosive if mixed in the right quantities, and what exactly
are the 'right quantities' depends on the chemical formula of the gas
used.

When you initially light the flame, it just burns like any gas
cigarette lighter, or like a gas cooker flame, only rather more weakly
because it isn't under pressure and doesn't have an optimised burner
outlet. As the gas is burned from the hole in the lid above, it is
replaced by air coming through the hole in the base below, until, when
the right quantities are reached ... BOOM!

No ****, sherlock - as they say

So what, without looking it up, it the explosive concentration for mains
gas ?

No peeking, if you don't know, take a guess ...

--
geoff

In message , Java Jive
writes
On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:51:32 +0100, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

You couldn't do that now. Modern domestic gas is heavier than air.

Really, I'm very surprised to hear that. I wonder what the different
formulae were/are.

It
used to be possible to fill a huge plastic bag with the stuff and send
it floating off into the sky, but it's no fun any more.

That *has* to be a good thing. Plastic bags that end up in the ocean
get mistaken by turtles for jellyfish. They try to swallow them, and
choke to death.

But do they explode when you shove a pipe up 'em ?


--
geoff

In message , Adrian
writes
james wrote:
In message , Brian
Gaff writes
Can one complain to the ASA about stuff on the BBC?

Naw. Some can whinge about jeopardy posting, though. JF

You're being an arsehole, Brian has no choice about top posting as he's
blind. As you would know if you bothered to ask instead of making snide
comments.

So let him put the words "blind ****" in his sig then


--
geoff

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart writes
In article , Ivan wrote:
I wouldn't mind betting that there are plenty of people in their
sixties'
nudging seventies contributing to this newsgroup who wouldn't mind a
pound
for every technical problem they've sorted out for people less than half
their age ;-)

Indeed.

But if we're talking about people one sixth of my age, that could be a
different matter...

But 6 doesn't go into 87

Yes it does. It gives 14.5.

--
Max Demian