Morgan
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Exploding toroidal votices
As a demonstration, might it be possible to fill a smoke ring shooter with the diaphram or piston pulled back, cocked and loaded, with hydrogen and
chlorine and have the vortex shot out traveling a distance to an ultraviolet source detonating say 15 feet away? I thought about hydrogen being so
light that a cover over the hole would have to be in place until the instant you fired it. Then too as hydrogen would want to climb, it might work
best aimed straight up or at some upward angle. Smoke rings can travel amazingly fast with not that much effort.
It seems like this could work or have some probability of success. I don't know if the hydrogen and chlorine would stay together in the swirl, being a
different mass one heavier and one lighter than air. Maybe you could make the launcher mix "rich or lean" to offset/fine tune any impending imbalance.
Vortices are nice and so are hydrogen/chlorine reactions, I just thought it would be illustrative to combine the two.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN82GoBG98s
"Extraordinary and beautiful examples of toroidal vortices"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHyTOcfF99o
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neptunium
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interesting ... so you would like to fire a ring of H2 and Cl2 in air? i ve notice that all vortices are stable when the medium is a differente
material than the ring itself...
air in water (or gas)
dust in air
water mist in air
etc...
never seen a liquid vortice in another liquide or a gas in another gas...what do you think?
it would seem pretty hard to keep Hydrogen and chlorine together in air i guess..maybe with Bromine?
[Edited on 12-4-2013 by neptunium]
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confused
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dont think that the gases would stay together due to the different densities of the gases...but i may be wrong
How strong would the vortex be?
I for one would not like bromine vortexes being shot across the lab
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Morgan
International Hazard
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Instead of using the UV light source as a downrange initiator with H2/Cl2 maybe something as simple as a very small pile of 1% Pt on alumina set as a
target and you fire a hydrogen vortex at it. I've a 4 ounce bottle of the talc-like stuff, more than enough, and it only takes a small amount.
Depending on the distance and entrainment of air in the torus, that might work too. Hydrogen/air mixtures are fairly impressive.
With the hydrogen/chlorine "vortex time bombs" you could start out small, making a little 3 centimeter diameter launcher aimed out a sunny window or
something. By varying the suddeness of the pulse, the swirling mass might make it several feet intact before dilution or demixing.
One time I tried some of the Pt powder in a finger pump sprayer containing methanol. I swirled the bottle and sprayed some of the mist into the air
but it didn't work. It seemed the wetted catalyst powder didn't dry fast enough when sprayed with methanol, maybe a more forceful atomizing device
would have had a chance.
Surely there's something you could contrive to make an exquisite demonstration. Once you've seen or done most of the popular classroom demonstrations,
you kind of long for something new.
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12AX7
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Oooh, ooh.
Fire one cannon with the H2/Cl2 mixture. Simultaneously fire another cannon with aerosolized Pt:Al2O3, so the vortices collide.
I would also suggest a regular gas with wide explosive range, like H2 or CH4. It should pick up enough O2 to ignite by the time it passes a more
mundane ignition source, say, a candle or electrical spark.
Tim
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Morgan
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Yes, a hypergolic collision would be amusing. That's interesting about using a dust devil vortex of Pt/alumina. Maybe the dust vortex/initiator could
be small and the bomb vortex large, the diorama presented as an impending head on collision - the smaller launched from one side of the room , the
larger from the other slowly set off on their lumbering journey. Maybe ear muffs would be in order.
Realistically though, you wouldn't want to breathe Pt particles or the chlorine so maybe you could demonstrate it on a small scale inside a long
acrylic case or such.
Hydrogen/oxygen or hydrogen entrained with air directed at a platinum catalyst sponge wired down/suspended might work, designed like the little
elements inside Pt catalyst lighters that use methanol. I would expect some fine tuning efforts to get it right. Or maybe it would just fall in your
lap. ha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJk8ijAUCiI
An outdoor experiment
Another variation would be to collide a hydrogen torus into chlorine ring on a calm, sunny morning. I wonder how that would go?
And then there are other exotic fuels and oxidizers out there that become hypergolic when mixed.
[Edited on 12-4-2013 by Morgan]
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Sedit
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http://youtu.be/IyAyd4WnvhU
The idea of something like this being able to also explode is something interesting to say the least. I wounder if the military has ever attempted
anything of this sort.
Knowledge is useless to useless people...
"I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes. The fall of Rome, the fall of Germany — the
fall of the ruling country, the people who think they can do whatever they want without anybody else's consent. I've seen this story
before."~Maynard James Keenan
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Morgan
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A zirconium powder torus would be dazzling if you could pull it off.
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Morgan
International Hazard
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If this were the case, it might be easier or a variation on a theme making hydrogen and oxygen and then adding a small amount of chlorine, a three-way
effect.
I recall that accident where several H2/O2 balloons were put in a large plastic garbage bag for later use which created static and a sudden awareness.
So I wonder if a diaphramed smoke ring launcher would have any chance of "going off" if used with chlorine/hydrogen mixes? Just to be on the safe
side, at least it would be something to keep in mind if there was any chance of making static.
"The Photosensitized Explosion of Hydrogen and Oxygen by Chlorine."
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/95863?uid=3739600&...
Sunlight creating static.
"On the Moon, there is no rubbing. The dust is electrostatically charged by the Sun in two different ways: by sunlight itself and by charged particles
flowing out from the Sun (the solar wind)."
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/30...
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