Another warning.

**ranald** · Mar 9, 2019, 09:25 PM

I am definately not a chemical person, so please forgive me for what i have to report. As kids, one of the best fun things (hate the word funist unlike funniest) to do was to make hydrogen balloons while our parents went dancing on a saturday night. We would use caustic soda (stored in glass ......way before hdpe) and mix in our saved milk bottle tops made from aluminium (I think). the materials were placed in a soft drink bottle (glass) : the neck of which a balloon could be stretched over. The resultant reaction created a gas for our balloons.

when totally dark, we would release the hydrogen balloon tied with a strip of magnesium after lighting the magnesium with a match and watch the light cross the sky in the breeze. "Great Scott" I'm back to the future and both my Bro & I are still alive.

**JTG** · Mar 9, 2019, 11:30 PM

Believe it or not, so long as you were outside and weren't actually holding the balloon, that was a safer activity than you realized. One of the more popular demonstrations that I have done countless times is igniting balloons of flammable mixtures, including methane (fwooOOM), hydrogen (Bang!) and ideal mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen (BOOM!). Wearing hearing protection, I would ignite these with a 3-foot long torch, and while you could feel the shockwave, it wasn't powerful enough to cause injury to anyone more than a few feet away.

**ranald** · Mar 10, 2019, 12:07 AM

Originally Posted by JTG

Believe it or not, so long as you were outside and weren't actually holding the balloon, that was a safer activity than you realized. One of the more popular demonstrations that I have done countless times is igniting balloons of flammable mixtures, including methane (fwooOOM), hydrogen (Bang!) and ideal mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen (BOOM!). Wearing hearing protection, I would ignite these with a 3-foot long torch, and while you could feel the shockwave, it wasn't powerful enough to cause injury to anyone more than a few feet away.

we did get into mischief and at 4 years younger I was a follower for a while. We would see & hear the explosion from afar and thought how we startled the homes about the blast. If anyone had been hurt we would have heard about it. murder & any injury were not commonplace back, then in early sixties.

**suther51** · Mar 11, 2019, 12:57 PM

Reminds me of stories I have heard of filling garbage bags or weather balloons with oxygen and acetylene. Some how the story tellers were unscathed to tell there tails.
Eric