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.