I remember going in one day and buying potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal so I could make my own black powder.
You still can:
potassium nitrate.
I won't be surprised if this post gets deleted for even mentioning what goes into black powder !
The academic journal
Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics is available to anyone who either has access or wishes to pay for articles. And access can include inter-library loans. That's just one journal. Glassman & Yetter's
Combution is published by Academic Press and is currently in its 4th edition. You can buy it on Amazon.
Let's not even mention thermite. I wonder how the authorities will control aluminum and iron rust ? :areyoucra
They don't even try to, nor do they make any special efforts to prevent people from more advanced incendiary systems:
Nanoscale investigation of surfaces exposed to a thermite spray Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011).
Why? Because no matter how many times some incarnation of various handbooks and cookbooks appears, from
Steal This Book and the original
Jolly Roger junk, most of it is inaccurate and the government tends track particular ingredients. The ATF has a
list of explosives which includes ammonium nitrate mixtures that are not cap-sensitive and that are. Yet instant cold packs aren't regulated. Why? For the same reason the federal government doesn't care if some teenager burns his house down playing around with thermite and magnesium strips: that's nothing compared to the damage the same kid can do with gasoline.
Thermite isn't anything special. It just burns very hot. Gasoline is vastly more dangerous because
1) it's a liquid, making it more difficult to control (e.g., a spill that goes unnoticed can have serious consequences)
2) it's cheap and doesn't require extremely hot tools (including other chemicals) to ignite.
3) It doesn't burn as hot, but you can disperse a lot more of it far more easily and the fact that it doesn't burn as hot makes it more destructive.
Like thermite, that's really all blackpowder does: burn. It is easier to ignite, but it doesn't detonate.
Any combustion in an enclosed space means a rapid transition into gases and rapid expansion, and this includes various elementary school experiments and/or projects kids do today.
The government cares about are things like the selling of nitric acid and, more recently, detection methods for peroxide-based HEs. So if you buy certain precursors (particularly in large quantities), you will attract the attention of various government agencies. Local arson and kids doing stupid and dangerous things are what police deal with, not the FBI, Homeland, and interdepartmental programs like the Joint anti-terrorist task force.
It is absolutely pathetic. Even caustic soda (sodium hydroxide ) is controlled now. Draino ! FFS ! I used to make hydrogen balloons using draino and coke cans.
Controlled how?
We are about to see the stupidest generation of all time, and they think they are 'more evolved' ( I've seen the term used that way) because they know how to use a smartphone !
That has a great deal to do with the way in which the educational system is designed (as preparation for colleges that no longer really exist), and nothing to do with the fact that you can't buy black powder or potassium nitrate at your local pharmacy.
What is so good about kids playing with chemical reactions like those in ignited thermite mixtures that cannot be put out easily (the oxygen supply is internal to the mixture)? How is that related to education? If you want good science experiments to show kids, the
Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction is far more educational than pyrotechnics without the hazards:
[youtube]3JAqrRnKFHo[/youtube]
Oscillatory systems that are readily, easily, and safely produced by chemical reactions are far, far more important for today's sciences. They demonstrate visually a fundamental recurring property of complex systems in all scientific fields: emergent properties (in this case oscillating patterns which cannot be predicted yet are produced by such simple ingredients) of systems that might seem simple yet can generate unpredictable organization (ordo ab chao, as it were).
, and I mean a kid of about 10-12 years old (1965), I would buy ether from my local chemist so I could make fuel for my diesel airplane engine. I remember going in one day and buying potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal so I could make my own black powder. I won't be surprised if this post gets deleted for even mentioning what goes into black powder !
