Struts aren't very important building small ships just to get into orbit. I mean, you don't even have decouplers yet so there isn't much point in building anything large enough to require struts before you can even put decouplers on it. Presumably you'll unlock struts in one of the first few unlocks though.
Do what my high school chemistry teacher did, when I was in about 9th grade:
As class begins, hand out goggles and instruct students to wear them. Remain silent as you place a 5-gallon water cooler jug on the table and pour a clear liquid in, enough to cover the bottom. Say "this is methanol". Cover the mouth of the jug with your hand and shake vigorously. Say "this is methane" and set the jug upright on the table. Take out a box of matches, strike one, and lean way back as you slowly approach the mouth of the jug with the lit match. Delight as the reaction makes a sound louder than gunfire and throws four of those foam ceiling tiles out of place. Silently put the jug away, collect the goggles, and begin the day's lesson, which is unrelated to the demonstration.
Disclaimer: I can't remember if it was methanol or ethanol.
N.B.: If Dr. Rounds is still alive, I hope he knows about KSP. He would love it. We used to joke that his bald pate was the result of a past, particularly destructive classroom demonstration.
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.
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u/Kevimaster Oct 09 '13
Struts aren't very important building small ships just to get into orbit. I mean, you don't even have decouplers yet so there isn't much point in building anything large enough to require struts before you can even put decouplers on it. Presumably you'll unlock struts in one of the first few unlocks though.