Re: The Mad Scientists Club- formerly Re: [FWD] Whoops! Wrong stealth pic in previous post!

From: Pat Flannery (flanner_at_daktel.com)
Date: 07/22/04 

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 02:11:08 -0500

Bryan Ashcraft wrote:

>>Mine was a propane cylinder in a caulking gun; it got stuck in the "on"
>>position one (formerly) cold winter night, allowing me to set fire to a
>>tree and melt a snowbank... but the liquid propane drenched
>>snowballs/fireballs were still the most fun, allowing me to set fire to
>>my neighbor's trees as well.
>>
>>
>
>I hope the neighbour didn't sue you :-0 The tank did have an anti blowback
>valve right?
>

 Damned if I know- it was a Bernz-O-Matic propane cylinder that you use
the screw on torch with.

>
>As a teen my one experience with propane was throwing a 2lb cylinder into a
>roaring fire. The noise of the cylinder letting go was sure impressive as
>well as the 10 foot fireball that went up in the air. It was a good job I
>did this in a small clearing in a wood and had a tree to hide behind, as
>there was a few bits of shrapnel! It is not something I would ever care to
>repeat these days.
>

When I was working at our local airport as a weather observer, we got
five-foot tall steel cylinders of helium to inflate our weather balloons
with. IIRC, they were pressurized to 3000 PSI (they weighed a couple of
hundred pounds or more) these had a warning of them to never open the
tank valve without a pressure regulator attached...so I opened one
without the regulator attached to find out why exactly you should never
do that. The reason you don't do that is because it makes a very loud
noise as the helium escapes- a noise _so_ loud that you won't be hearing
anything much for around half-an-hour after you do it.

Pat

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