posted January 05, 2000 04:06 PM            

you know what hydrogen and oxygen do when you ignite them right? there is a nice boom, a nice flash and all of a sudden there is water again. if the mixture is in an open room, you would have to have a WHOLE lot to do anything. without being pressurized not much happens unless there's a lot of it...

you are right that you couldn't detect it though unless you have specialized equipment... you can't smell or see the hydrogen/oxygen coming out of the electrolyisizer.

say you want your little electrolysis device to produce 100 litres for this explosion... using hydrogen density calcs off of a nasa page shows it would take around 18 kilowatt-hours of electricity (assuming a 120 volt power supply)... that means using a 3 amp supply you'd have to run it for over two days continously...

...two days and all you get is 100 litres... maybe enough to fill up a large garbage bag if you were trapping it somehow... dispersed in a room though, 100 litres probably wouldn't do much of anything. especially if there was any air circulation.

now... if you were simply using the cell as a timing device for something else... guess that could work as you wouldn't be relying on large amounts of gas that would have to be trapped. electrolysis is extremely slow though... maybe that's the point...

posted January 05, 2000 05:27 PM            

FAEs use a fuel that is liquid under pressure (like propane, ethylene oxide, etc) that vaporizes into a cloud of vapor which is then ignited.

Check out this link to see a animated GIF of an FAE in action. You'll see the formation of the vapor cloud and ignition. Very interesting.

http://www.ittc.ukans.edu/~botanika/images/FAEbig.gif

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"The knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them." www.50megs.com/nbk2000

posted January 05, 2000 06:16 PM         

There's an old movie called "Chain Reacion"
by Keanu Reeves several years ago, the lab in the movie was destroyed by hydrogen gas explosion, though, too exaggerated effects,
it leveled 8 blocks.

Electrolysis water takes long time, if the big room is closed and using multiple devices
to drain power from wall plug, achieving the
desirable volume of hydrogen gas is just a matter of time.

Since there are already oxygen in the air, the main job is to produce hydrogen, there are simple ways to do it. Simmer aluminum or zinc strips into thick NaOH solution can produce H2 "very very quick", if done well, you can blow up a school locker in just a few minutes, if you really need oxygen, mix hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide, it
will bubble very quick to produce O2 as well.

posted January 06, 2000 12:09 AM            

Quote:" perhaps the most interesting of FAX devices is the closet water Bomb. In this, a battery or elecrtical source within the target is used so electrolise water to form a hyrogen oxygen mixture; Low voltage is nesasary how ever AC curent will suffice as the gasses will be mixed, and desruction of the electrode are of no concern. In this case the container is simply placed in a diused room and connected to a battery or plugged in. A small lump of white phosphorus in the bottom of the container will serve as igniter.