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Schmity
Probably not a bot. Junior Member.


Joined: 24 Jul 2007
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:56 pm    Post subject: Cool reaction help! Reply with quote

I'm just wondering if anyone knows any cool reaction with potassium nitrate? (aside from 4 parts sugar 6 parts potassium nitrate for smoke bombs) I was also wondering if you can make flash powder using potassium nitrate.
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Hix3r
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Joined: 24 Apr 2007
Posts: 43
Location: Hungary

PostPosted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 7:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't know if flash powder can be made with this substance. First of all flash powder must be something that emits large amount of light in a short period of time. From my experiences potassium nitrate does not do things like this.

A cool reaction? My teacher showed us a cool experiment with sodium nitrate, but he said that this would work with potassium nitrate as well.

First of all, this is a dangerous one, so be extremely careful. You must use a test-tube that endures heat. Then you must fix it in a position wherever you want but you can't hold it during the experiment, and the bottom of the tube must remain free, because you will heat it from different directions.

So you put potassium nitrate into the tube, maybe 1 cm high, then you start to heat it with a bunsen burner. The technique is that you hol the bunsen burner and constantly heat the tube from different directions, because the goal is to melt it completely. This will take some time. Be careful, don't let the thing catch on fire.

When it's melt, you take a wooden straw, and drop it into the tube, and step back. The liquid immediately starts to "eat" the straw, you can see how it disappears. The remaining liquid will have a color, and toxic fumes will leave the tube, but you can simply say, that this is a way better method to make things disappear than David Copperfield's method.
again be careful. After this you probably want to let the whole thing cool, and the throw it away...
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