Dry ice + plastic bottle + cinder block = BOOM

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By John Baichtal
Posted 2010/04/27 @ 2:57 pm
Category Science

Need something to do with those pesky 3-liter bottles, cinder blocks, and lumps of dry ice lying around? Combine them! [Via EMSL's always-excellent linkdump.]

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9 Responses to Dry ice + plastic bottle + cinder block = BOOM

Collin Cunningham on April 27th, 2010 at 6:08 pm said:

So awesome!

I definitely would’ve guessed the cap would blow off first.

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- http://david.rysdam.org/blog/ on April 28th, 2010 at 4:45 am said:
  
  This is why rope isn’t made of concrete.
  
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jimofoz on April 27th, 2010 at 6:35 pm said:

That is definitely a bigger boom that I was expecting.

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John Park on April 27th, 2010 at 10:19 pm said:

DUDE!

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Silverman on April 27th, 2010 at 10:32 pm said:

You guys haven’t done this!? Do it! Go to the store now, get the dry ice! You don’t need a cinder block, just the bottles, fill them partially with water to speed things up. It is amazingly loud. I brought some to the last day of high school…

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DanYHKim on April 28th, 2010 at 7:50 am said:

Even a 1 liter soda bottle can explode with enough force to crack a cinder block (I’ve done this). A 3-liter bottle is overkill. That being said, anyone who wants to do something like this should be aware that an exploding soda bottle is able to kill you. If it goes off while you are holding it, losing a finger or hand is the least of your worries. I think a 2 liter bottle would easily disembowel a human.

Did you hear the comment about having a dent in the door? If a piece of the cinder block was projected with that force, it could just as well have hit one of the three observers. Anyone setting up something like this is obliged to warn off any passers-by that a potentially dangerous explosion is expected. I’m sure nobody wants to kill a neighbor’s child by accident.

Are you prepared to pay for someone’s windshield? How about bodywork and a new paint job on a neighbor’s car? Are you ready to be arrested, if a police car is passing by when it goes off?

I like beverage bombs as much as anyone, but they must be given the same respect as any powerful explosive device.

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simplehoomin.myopenid.com on April 28th, 2010 at 12:07 pm said:

I’ve done the dry-ice/soda bottle boomers many times before when I was a lot younger, and you can obviously see in the video that they are very powerful and can be equally dangerous. We used to use mostly air in the bottle though, very little air. We filled the bottom of the bottle with a few good-sized pieces of dry ice, or a good layer of smaller bits, and then covered them with maybe an inch or two of water. it takes a lot longer to split the bottle, but it makes a more satisfying “THUMP” due to the larger volume of expanding gasses.

I’d never put a bottle inside something that could essentially turn into a fragmentation grenade, the bottle exploding and flying off is dangerous enough. This exploding cinder block idea is foolish and what gets innocent fun like this criminalized.

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- simplehoomin.myopenid.com on April 28th, 2010 at 12:20 pm said:
  
  I meant “…mostly air in the bottle though, very little *water*.”
  
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MadRat on April 28th, 2010 at 5:40 pm said:

I made some of these for the 4th of July years ago. Yes, any plastic soda pop bottle will work no matter how many or few liters. The one problem I found was you never know how long it will be until it blows up.

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