This is one of my most prized possessions mainly because (like snowflakes) it's one of a kind. This is an aluminum cast of the interior of a fire ant colony. One day surfing through Youtube I came across another material engineer who like me also had a foundry. All he did was use his foundry and pour molten aluminum into one of the hole of an anthill and I called up my friend and said "Get the F#%k over here". I showed him at how beautiful the finished sculptor was and I looked up others and each one just blew my mind so that weekend me and my friend called up a friend we knew since Elementary School to use his pickup truck and since my mom is a location scout she gave us a perfect field full of anthills. We spent the entire day there just melting and pouring and these anthills just kept taking in the aluminum that we didn't know if it was working or if we should stop or if the metal underground was ready to explode. So after 8 pours the aluminum reached the surface with the final pour. After waiting10 minutes to make sure everything was hardened we excavated the site and pulled out the anthill you see above. It took 2 months of chiseling rocks and cleaning and shining to become the sculptor you see today.

Here's a poem...

One Hour Science Nap

 

 

Three o'clock in the afternoon. Can’t believe I survived another day of hell. School. The couch waits like a hug from Grandma. The shades are drawn. Shoes off. Wristwatch off. Phone off. Maybe pants. Optional. Dependent on exhaustion level versus concern over thinking. Trying to put my mind at ease. Body sinks into cushions. Mister Head, meet Mister Pillow. Mister Pillow, meet Mister Head. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three... oblivion. R.E.M sleep engage. Tom Lehrer and Frank Sinatra brain bubbles. Fifty-five minutes later, consciousness. Reorientation. Where am I? Who am I? Check time. Five minutes before annoying assistant, who has to be wondering why he bothered to go to college, knocks on the door. Sleep more? No. Better to lie here and worry. Five minutes not enough. Then the firm rap on the door. "Okay," I call out. Dress. Lights. Open door. Bothersome best friend arrives. Share couch that I fondly remember sleeping upon. Reminiscing. Explosive assistant who also can't quite believe he’s going to college for this nonsense. "Let’s do it," I say as we prepare for another near death experience. Look at each other with procrastinating eyes. Eat together while mindlessly switching TV channel between Comedy Central, TBS and Cartoon Network. Rested, recharged and thoroughly depressed. Ride rip stick to field. Make explosions.

It's that time of the year again, the day that both my parents and homeland security fear the most. Yes this video takes place on July 4th, my second favorite holiday! This is the only time of the year were explosives turn from illegal to frowned upon. On July 4, 2014 I performed my very first grenade experiment. Now before you believe that I cheated death (which I obviously have countless times) let me explain that this grenade is what I call a "Naked Grenade" which means that there is no metal casing around it to produce shrapnel when it explodes. I'm not sure I should tell you the procedures to re-create this experiment for your own safety, remember I maybe crazy but I'm also smart....which put together makes me dangerous but that's besides the point. But I will give the a hint of the main ingredient 2KNO3 + S + 3C ---------> K2S + N2 + 3CO2.
This experiment was one of my favorite explosions because when ignited the shockwave was so intense that you could feel a pressure wave caress and envelope your entire body also the sound wave was heard over 5 miles away.

C3H8 aka Propane

                  

         This experiment is one of my most popular due to the fact that it gets the adrenaline pumping! Please excuse my friend, he was caught off guard. With this experiment all I did was acquire a 36 inch balloon that I got at Party City and fill it up with propane using an adapter I got on Amazon shipped from Canada. This is legal by the way but it is...frowned upon. I normally conduct this experiment when I have friends or family over but my original intension for this project was to study the difference from combustion from explosion, normal people get them confused all the time. This is actually a combustion due to the fact that it is not a rapid increase in volume that takes place imparting momentum to the reaction particles with a production of a subsonic shock wave, meaning explosion makes shock waves and combustions do not. I ignited the balloon using toilet paper because I needed a delayed fuse that acts as a miniature fire, if you use a firework fuse you pop the balloon but the fuse will not give off enough heat to ignite the propane and because propane is heavier than air it will just land softly on the ground and dissipate. But if you had a fire near you like I did when the propane is crawling on the ground it will then ignite causing your entire driveway to become a beautiful and terrifying sea of fire for around five seconds. Symptoms from this are neighbors screaming, hysterical laughter, active adrenaline, and rapidly trying to figure out ways to hide this from your parents….not necessarily in that order.

 

 

 

Just for the record this is my foundry! <3

 

Welcome to Explosions 101

Hey there fellow blog readers my name is Michael and during this blog I will be showing you some of my homemade experiments and as you can already guess the majority of such experiments will be explosions. Some of you may ask, Why make a blog about explosions? My answer to you is why isn't every blog about explosions? To me explosions are the most beautiful thing in the world and I love to share that with everyone and what better way to show the world than in a blog? Ever since I was a young member of the human race I was obsessed with science I come from a family of scientists so I basically grew up with it. Science is all around us and when I was little my family always gave me the scientific definition of what I was looking at. But that only happens at family reunions because both of my parents are in the film industry my father is a writer, producer, and director and my mother is a location scout who previously worked for the TV series Burn Notice. But even being non profession scientists they still taught me the basics of the universe. Now setting that aside, most of my experiments involve heat because being a future material engineer I work with foundries which are basically ovens on steroids. My foundry goes up to 2500 Fahrenheit and I have successfully melted iron, but mostly I melt aluminum since it’s so easy to work with. By Friday I will have my first experiment ready for this blog and ill tell you the science behind it incase your curious. Hope you enjoy this blog my fellow classmates!