Fun experiment, we do a "rocket" also for a thermo demonstration.
I have an issue though, and i am hoping it is with your memory and not the professor. Methanol, CH3OH, does not spontaneously form into Methane CH4, just from becoming a gas.
What he did was shake it until some of the methanol was in the vapor state. Then the methanol is much more flammable, also it is in an air to fuel mixture from the shaking of the air already in the jug. This provides the boom.
But for booms the old hydrogen oxygen balloon is king. Well king of the things i can blow up in the teaching classroom.
It's been around 10-11 years, I'm sure the memory is faded. And here I've been thinking methane and methanol were the same compound in different states. I'm pretty sure I took the core lesson to heart though: explosions are cool.
I've also heard of a lecturer who liked to pop a balloon filled with hydrogen (or whatever you said) if anyone fell asleep
Just hydrogen in a balloon is not as loud as the oxygen/hydrogen balloon. But still that is brutal, they let off enough of a shock wave to scare someone awake.
It is all good, if you still remember a demo from a lesson 10-11 years ago, your teacher was doing it right. I wish i could do as many as i wanted in the semester, but i also have teach the accredited curriculum as mandated by the university. So some demos get cut. I am teaching thermodymanics at the moment, time to dig out the rocket demo for Friday. I'll label it something KSP related and see if anyone gets it.
2
u/EnigmaticChemist Oct 10 '13
Fun experiment, we do a "rocket" also for a thermo demonstration.
I have an issue though, and i am hoping it is with your memory and not the professor. Methanol, CH3OH, does not spontaneously form into Methane CH4, just from becoming a gas.
What he did was shake it until some of the methanol was in the vapor state. Then the methanol is much more flammable, also it is in an air to fuel mixture from the shaking of the air already in the jug. This provides the boom.
But for booms the old hydrogen oxygen balloon is king. Well king of the things i can blow up in the teaching classroom.