4 ms·

I have never been to the US, but I wonder if this is equally safe in the EU where plastics regulations appear to have changed the density and feel of drinks con

I have never been to the US, but I wonder if this is equally safe in the EU where plastics regulations appear to have changed the density and feel of drinks containers over the past half-decade or more. They're obviously fine for carbonated drinks, and probably bottle-rocket use too, but I wonder about their structural integrity as a receptacle for alcohol combustion.

4gotunameagain 2y ago
Only one way to find out !
vvchvb 2y ago
I think so: 1. It's only a drop out two of alcohol 2. Carbonated drinks are at a very high pressure already. I could, if I wasn't feeling lazy right now, do the math to compare the two pressures. Its easy stuff - two drops of alcohol combusted + assumption all the combustion products are ideal gases vs Henry's law for CO2. This last one will require looking up how much co2 is dissolved in the product, but thats not too hard. But, like the other commentator pointed out.... there's only one way to find out.
hermitcrab 2y ago
Soda bottles are surprisingly strong. Even if one fails, I think it would probably split, rather than creating dangerous shrapnel (citation needed).
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  The patent for the PET soda bottle was granted to one of the Wyeth brothers! https://patents.google.com/patent/US3733309A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US3733309A/en The patent says they are good to 100 psi for regular operation and people pump them up to 2x that when they shoot them up as rockets. It's fun to make a "chemical pressure bomb" out of that kind of bottle, the classiest way to do that is to use liquid nitrogen, the second classiest way is to put in a pellet of dry ice, if you have no class at all you put in some aluminum foil and either a strong acid ("The Works" drain cleaner) or a strong base (Lye/Sodium Hydroxide) which in either case will evolve hydrogen. [1] The dry ice version goes off in 30-45 minutes if you put in just the pellet, if you add some hot water it works like a hand grenade and will explode less than a minute, cold water is intermediate. These are dangerous at point blank range https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygYNfAKjNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygYNfAKjNs but in my experience harmless 10 feet away. [2] [3] When I was in college my friends and I made a bunch of them and threw them into a vacant lot at night and thought 30 minutes later that we'd failed, but soon we heard a series of loud explosions which caused the neighbors to call the police. The cops drove by and shined a spotlight into the area and we were worried that the last one would go off when he was there but it exploded just after he drove off. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor... [1] ... and spray dangerous chemicals. Don't do it. [2] had one blow the bottom out of a small plastic waste basket though and read a report which I couldn't find this time about a high school chemistry teacher who tried this in class and it blew up in a student's hand, blinding him [3] usually the bottle is torn up such that most of the plastic is in one big piece with jagged edges, today people would worry about microplastic generation
bityard 2y ago
TFA warned against using bottles other than soda because soda bottles are made to withstand a lot of pressure. Others may or may not. I don't imagine ANY plastic bottle survives too many lift-offs.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  See https://waterockets.com/ https://waterockets.com/ for commercial kits for making really fancy pressurized water rockets, even 3-stage rockets! You can get many many uses out of a bottle. In Larry Niven's Known Space books, rockets are launched from earth using some kind of super-compressed material encased in tanks made of some unobtanium, a vastly improved version of those water rockets.

4gotunameagain 2y ago

Only one way to find out !

vvchvb 2y ago

I think so: 1. It's only a drop out two of alcohol 2. Carbonated drinks are at a very high pressure already. I could, if I wasn't feeling lazy right now, do the math to compare the two pressures. Its easy stuff - two drops of alcohol combusted + assumption all the combustion products are ideal gases vs Henry's law for CO2. This last one will require looking up how much co2 is dissolved in the product, but thats not too hard. But, like the other commentator pointed out.... there's only one way to find out.

hermitcrab 2y ago

Soda bottles are surprisingly strong. Even if one fails, I think it would probably split, rather than creating dangerous shrapnel (citation needed).

PaulHoule 2y ago
The patent for the PET soda bottle was granted to one of the Wyeth brothers! https://patents.google.com/patent/US3733309A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US3733309A/en The patent says they are good to 100 psi for regular operation and people pump them up to 2x that when they shoot them up as rockets. It's fun to make a "chemical pressure bomb" out of that kind of bottle, the classiest way to do that is to use liquid nitrogen, the second classiest way is to put in a pellet of dry ice, if you have no class at all you put in some aluminum foil and either a strong acid ("The Works" drain cleaner) or a strong base (Lye/Sodium Hydroxide) which in either case will evolve hydrogen. [1] The dry ice version goes off in 30-45 minutes if you put in just the pellet, if you add some hot water it works like a hand grenade and will explode less than a minute, cold water is intermediate. These are dangerous at point blank range https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygYNfAKjNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygYNfAKjNs but in my experience harmless 10 feet away. [2] [3] When I was in college my friends and I made a bunch of them and threw them into a vacant lot at night and thought 30 minutes later that we'd failed, but soon we heard a series of loud explosions which caused the neighbors to call the police. The cops drove by and shined a spotlight into the area and we were worried that the last one would go off when he was there but it exploded just after he drove off. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor... [1] ... and spray dangerous chemicals. Don't do it. [2] had one blow the bottom out of a small plastic waste basket though and read a report which I couldn't find this time about a high school chemistry teacher who tried this in class and it blew up in a student's hand, blinding him [3] usually the bottle is torn up such that most of the plastic is in one big piece with jagged edges, today people would worry about microplastic generation

bityard 2y ago

TFA warned against using bottles other than soda because soda bottles are made to withstand a lot of pressure. Others may or may not. I don't imagine ANY plastic bottle survives too many lift-offs.

PaulHoule 2y ago
See https://waterockets.com/ https://waterockets.com/ for commercial kits for making really fancy pressurized water rockets, even 3-stage rockets! You can get many many uses out of a bottle. In Larry Niven's Known Space books, rockets are launched from earth using some kind of super-compressed material encased in tanks made of some unobtanium, a vastly improved version of those water rockets.