posted December 06, 1999 05:58 PM            

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-Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!!

posted December 06, 1999 06:46 PM            

Simply cut out the red phosphorus strip and then immerse it in some rubbing alcohol(isopropyl alcohol). Let the rubbing alcohol fully soak into the strips. This will take about 10 minutes max. Remove the strip from the alcohol. Note how the red phosphorus has turned into a gooey gel type paste. This is because of the use of some kind of glue binder. It can be easily scraped off with a knife (x-acto knives are excellent for this purpose). Let it dry on some non porous surface like a ceramic or glass dish.

posted December 06, 1999 06:58 PM            

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-Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!!

K=39
Cl=35
O=16 x 3=48
K+Cl+3xO=122 which is its molecular weight. It is also the
weight of it which containes 10 to the 23 power (10E23)number of
molecules of potassium chlorate.

P=123 an element. 123 grams contains 10E23 atoms of P

These molecular weights relate the weight in grams to the
number of atoms or molecules of a thing. That lets you go
from a number formula to a weight formula.

The unbalanced formula is
KClO3 + P = KCl + P2O5
You want to burn the phosphorus to its highest oxide which is
Phorphorus pentoxide, same stuff that makes phosphoric acid.

To find the proper ratios you have to balance the equation
so there are the same number of atoms of each thing on each
side of the equal sign. This is like solving an algebra
problem,... you try numbers till it works.

If you do it you get:
15 KClO3 + 18 P = 15 KCl + 9 P2O5
Notice there are the same number of atoms on each side of =
Left side = right side
15 K 15K
15Cl 15Cl
15x3=45 O 9x5=45 O
18P 9x2=19P

This is the least number of molecules of KClO3 and P which
"balance" to give equal numbers of each atoms both sides of
the = sign. The atoms only come in molecules of KClO3 and P
so you have to juggle things so you get whole numbers of those
two ingredients.
Now to figure how much weight of each:
15 x 123 = 1830 grams of KClO3
and 18 x 123 = 2214 grams of P

If you divide the larger number by the smaller number you can
get the grams of P for each gram of KClO3:
2214/1830 = 1.21 close enough.

So mix one gram KClO3 with 1.21 Grams P to get into maximum
trouble.

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED THAT THIS IS AN ESPECIALLY DANGEROUS
COMPOUND TO FOOL WITH. DO NOT TAKE THAT WARNING LIGHTLY.
RUNNING AROUND FOR MONTHS WHILE YOU GROW NEW SKIN ON A HAND
IS NOT FUN. DEAL WITH SMALL QUANTITIES (1 GRAM kCLO3 AND
1.21 GRAMS p TO START WITH SO WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR INEVITABLE
ACCIDENT IT WILL BE ENOUGH TO TEACH YOU RESPECT FOR THE
STUFF, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO REMOVE APPENDAGES FROM YOU.

The reason P mixtures are so sensitive is P is almost at its
ignition temperature at room temp, so P acts like Sulfur would
it was almost molten, and you know that sulfur heated to near its
melting point will explode with nearly any oxidizer. As far as P
is concerned it is already heated to near its burning temp, just
room temp. If you work with P at 40 below zero F, it will behave
more like sulfur does. Because its already so hot that its molecules
are like an bitch in heat looking for oxygen or any other reactive
chemical, (yes it will burn all by itself with no help from you,
if mixed with other things, like powdered metals, powdered bleaches,
etc.)

Red P is listed in Cenco for $15.90 per 100 grams plus it
probably costs another $14 haz mat on delivery, plus they won't
sell chemicals to anyone except companies and schools, because
they don't want to get sued because some kid flamed himself.

Yellow P is not sold now for it catches fire spontaneously
if removed from its storage under mineral oil. It is hungrier
for oxygen than the red type. Both are pure phosphorus but the
red type has its molecules arranged differently mechanically, so
it is less reactive than the yellow. Also both are quite poisonous
if you ingest them. Folks used to put phosphorus compounds on
watches to make their hands glow inthe dark, and the workers
died of p poisioning at a pretty regular rate. So if you are
digging it off match books, do treat it like a poison, and do
wash your hands before eating. It is a cumulative poison, meaning
a tad today, and a tad next week all adds up till you have the
critical amount to poison you then the doctor will shake his head
and say Dang son, how in the hell did you do that? He'll also tell
you there's not much he can do for you, but would you mind standing
in this dark closet to see if you really do glow in the dark? I never
seen a P poisoned person before and only read of it in books, and
if you'd just stand in there I could see if its true. (its not, but
he'd not know that till he saw it himself).

Red P spontaneously oxidizes upon exposure to air, but much
slower than does yellow P, so Red P does not catch fire, when
exposed to air, but it does create small quantities of P2O5
which being delequescent absorbs moisture from air and forms
phosphoric acid (concentrated), which greatly accelerates its
oxidation.
If any chlorate or other oxidizing material is present the
acid greatly accelerates the decomposition of the oxidizer
and will cause armstrong mixtures to spontaneously ignite
and explode in a time varying from a day to months depending
on temperature, and purity of the chlorate etc. (sulfur mixes
have the same problem and need alkali also)

To stop the acid formation about 1% by weight of an alkali or basic
substance is added. Chalk, dried milk of magnesia
(Magnesium oxide), or bicarbonate of soda will all react with
any acid that occurs and keep the mixture neutral. This only
works if the armstrong mix is stored in air tight container.
if exposed to air it will owerwhelm the additive and then
"go" same as if none was present. Choose alkalis which tend to
dry themselves out when exposed to air, and avoid those that soak
up moisture from air.

Beware that this mixture is extremely friction sensitive, and
a tad caught in threads of a bottle cap can touch off the whole
bottle, and put parts of you into orbit.

The mixture is normally stored under water, or at least sopping wet, with
alkali in the water to prevent it igniting. Mixtures that are soaking wet
with water and no alkali left, will usually not explode but can flame and
create gobs of white smoke when they ignite.

It has little advantage over other chlorate mixtures as to
explosive power (sulfur is about equal) and since all its
end products are solids at room temp, the blasting power is not all
that great although it gives off great energy like burning aluminum
or magnesium.

Other than a curiosity to the ignorant, the mixture has no
real advantage.

If you want a mixture that is almost as good and is not very
dangerous, nor sensitive to friction, or to spontaneous combustion, and
has almost the power and brisance of mercury fulminate, use
potassium chlorate and the farm fungicide known as Zineb.

The ratio is about 3.5 grams KClO3 to 1 Gram Zineb, and you
can tinker with that ratio to get best fragmentation of
empty .22 lr hulls to fine tune it to your batch of Zineb.
Zineb is a good stable fuel for lots of explosive mixtures.

It is sold as a powder that is 75% pure. It costs about $2
a pound in 5 pound bags at farm coops.

Chlorate Zineb mixes are very sensitive to flame, relatively insensitive to
friction, and to blows, compared to other chlorate mixtures,
and is almost as good as Armstrong in all things, and
vastly more safe to fool with.

However if you manage to set off as much as about 25 grams
or so, of zineb chlorate mix, it has the capability of doing you serious
damage, even if not confined in any kind of container. In a
container, that much is truly awesome, but not quite as
much so as some high explosives. Remember a hand grenade only has
about 25 grams of explosive in it, and it can move walls, windows
and people, rather violently.

I've spent some time on this because I want to discourage you
from fooling with Armstrong, and the only way I know to do
that is to satisfy your curiosity by my own experience, and by
showing you something better and safer.

You have probably got a curiosity about nuclear weapons too,
but they also are dangerous to tinker with. If you could get
the stuff you'd have to run a experiment to see what its
critical mass was, and if you did that wrong you'd have a
miniature nuclear explosion in you face. No blast, but a
flash of radiation that would kill you for sure. Its best
to learn of this from the one fellow who made that mistake,
and died a few days later, rather than try to repeat it.

In explosives chemistry try to learn from other's mistakes
for if you make some of your own it's not likely you will
ever amount to much more than a handicapped person.

DO not try things without some advice from older and skilled
chemists. Listen to their advice about not doing certain
things. You wouldn't take an untested and unmeasured roll
of bungie and make your own, go jump off a high bridge,
to see if it was too long or not. Mixing some chemicals is
similar to doing that. Experienced chemists search books on
explosives and do math to see what energy is made available
by things they intend to mix BEFORE they do it. Often the
books will warn them that people have been hurt doing just
what he wanted to do. You don't have such books, so you have to
be careful as a mouse in a dog pound.

I don't know if this forum's engine will post all this for it is a
tad long, but I'll see.

Used the Hndbk of Chem & Physics, for P wt.
An older edition that is in very small print and 3000 pages long, gave the molecular wt for P4 and not P, and I didn't notice that tiny subscript 4 there.

The weight ratio I gave would still go rather furiously for p and chlorate mixes will go in almost all ratios.

The correct part about getting the proper weights using 31+ but most books give it as 32, so I'll use that as the wt for P and the correct weithts would be this:

posted December 06, 1999 08:48 PM           
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Here's how you do it:
K Cl 03 = Potassium Chlorate, Its molecular wt is:
K=39
Cl=35
O=16 x 3=48
K+Cl+3xO=122 which is its molecular weight. It is also the
weight of it which containes 10 to the 23 power (10E23)number of
molecules of potassium chlorate.

P=32 an element. 32 grams contains 10E23 atoms of P

These molecular weights relate the weight in grams to the
number of atoms or molecules of a thing. That lets you go
from a number formula to a weight formula.

The unbalanced formula is
KClO3 + P = KCl + P2O5
You want to burn the phosphorus to its highest oxide which is
Phorphorus pentoxide, same stuff that makes phosphoric acid.

To find the proper ratios you have to balance the equation
so there are the same number of atoms of each thing on each
side of the equal sign. This is like solving an algebra
problem,... you try numbers till it works.

If you do it you get:
15 KClO3 + 18 P = 15 KCl + 9 P2O5
Notice there are the same number of atoms on each side of =
Left side = right side
15 K 15K
15Cl 15Cl
15x3=45 O 9x5=45 O
18P 9x2=19P

This is the least number of molecules of KClO3 and P which
"balance" to give equal numbers of each atoms both sides of
the = sign. The atoms only come in molecules of KClO3 and P
so you have to juggle things so you get whole numbers of those
two ingredients.
Now to figure how much weight of each:
15 x 122 = 1830 grams of KClO3
and 18 x 32= 576 grams of P

If you divide the larger number by the smaller number you can
get the grams of KClO3 for each gram of P:
1830/576= close enough.

So mix 3.17 grams KClO3 with 1 Gram P to get into maximum
trouble.

Incidentally the pyro book's formula appears to be a bit shy on the KClO3, for maximum whump.

A quickie check without doing all the math suggests that 8 portions P would need 8x3.17
or 25.36 portions KClO3 to burn it all, and the
1 portion of S would take 2.54 portions KClO3
to burn it, so unless I made another mistake a better mix would be 25.4 + 2.5 or 27.9 grams Kclo3 and 8 gms P and 1 gm S, and as for putting sand in it, I would not be that brave. The slightest pressure or friction would surely ignite it for the sharp edges of a grain of sand pushing against another grain, can reach enormous psi values, and P and ClO3 won't tolerate much pressure.

Of course you could probably get away with it maybe 99 times out of a hundred, but you are playing a game where you can only loose once and you are out of the game. Just dropping some on the floor could make it go. Woe to ya ass if you had a cup full and dropped that. Don't know about you, but I drop stuff all the time. I gotta make sure stuff I handle can take dropping or fart will only be a stinky cloud of smoke that blows away on the wind, neer to be seen again. If you do add sand, do it in no more than 1 gram lot first try, and play with that to see how sensitive it is. It may approach nitrogen tri iodide in treachery.

The acid neutralizer is good. However as I said almost any ratio will "go", but when its balanced right, it goes at its best.

It would help if someone checked my numbers, I do make mistakes, and its hard to find your own mistakes sometimes, like one cannot proof read his own writing successfully, because his subconcious sees the previous mistake as fine, and will not notice many mistakes in an article, whereas another person can spot them like flies on a sandwich.

Many heads are better than one...as long as ego can be kept in its cage.

Sorry about the mistake, but I have not used P all that much, or I would have noticed that 123 was way to heavy for P.

The lesson to learn from this is to watch for chem books that list the molecular weight of elements as their combined weight in some peculiar multi atom assembly which they prefer to go around in, and don't put some sort of warning on that data.

True I ought have seen the 4 after the P, but with my eyesight these days, flies get away with murder for they are just fuzzy distortions in my visual field, and tend not to be noticed. I wonder if that's what makes some of my sandwiches taste funny now and then?

Hell, if y2k does its predicted thing, I may have to make a fly sandwich recipe, as food gets scarce, and protein becomes almost a rarity.

Take care, and do check the numbers anyone else gives you, if you can, and if you can't it would ge good survival insurance to learn how to figure it yourself.

When you do a calculation with calculators they tend to give you mistakes in 14 decimal place accuracy, and that tends to make one believe they may be correct. Develop the habit of rounding all numbers off to even numbers and calculating those. they are much easier to do without mistakes. Then your fancy hi accuracy calculator number better be about the same as the one you calculated roughly or there may be what used to be called a slide rule error, which means something was read ten times too big or too small, and the thing calculated would withstand the wrath of god for being ten times to sturdy, or break of its own weight for being ten times to weak. This is a very important skill to develop, for you can ball park things and spot mistakes easily doing that.