3 ms·

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

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