Coloured Flames

Capt'n Midnight

Pyromania is not to be encouraged and of course don't eat the strange powders.. (most are very bitter)

http://www.make-stuff.com/formulas/flames.html

....
If you enjoy sitting around your fireplace and watching colorful flames dance, you'll be happy to know you can color your own flames quite cheaply. Basically, there are three methods of coloring fireplace flames. You can soak the logs in an alcohol solution which contains certain chemicals. Or you can soak the logs in a water solution containing certain chemicals and then dry them. And finally, you can just throw certain chemicals into the flames. The various chemicals or salts required for certain colors of flames are as follows:

* 3 parts Potassium sulphate (Chromealum)
[garden centre]
and 1 part potassium nitrate (Salt Peter) for violet flames
Forget it - you can't buy the nitrate here.

* Strontium chloride for red flames
http://learn.sdstate.edu/deb_pravecek/chem106l/Chem106L/MSDS_files/STRONTIUM%20CHLORIDE.htm
Health Rating: 1 - Slight [not readily available]

* Calcium chloride (bleaching powder) for blue flames Bleach powder can be made of other things too - read the label !

* Magnesium sulphate (Epson Salts) for white flames [pharmacy - used as a laxitive]

* Baronsalts (Borax) for yellowish-green flames
[pharmacy - no longer used as eye wash]

* Copper sulphate (blue vitrol/Bluestone) for green flames [Garden centres]
[used to kill potato blight - also stains your hands]
Health Rating: 2 - Moderate

* Sodium chloride (table salt) for yellow flames

*Safety Data

Colorful flames: 1/2 lb. baking soda to 1/2 gallon of water, or 1/2 lb. borax to 1/2 gallon of water, or 1/2 lb. salt to 1/2 gallon of water. Soak pinecones overnight and put in mesh bag to dry You may also treat pinecones, coarse sawdust or cork waste and throw them into the fireplace to color the fire. They are far easier to treat and take less time to dry. Here are two methods for treating bases such as course sawdust, pinecones and cork waste.

Best for sawdust - Dissolve the chemical in water. Stir in your base. When the solution is completely absorbed, spread the base out in a thin layer to dry.

Best for cork-based chips - Add 1 pint of liquid glue to 7 parts of water. Crush the chemical to a fine powder and add 1 pound of the powder to each gallon of glue-water. Put into the liquid as much of the sawdust, cork waste or pinecones that it will take, stirring and adding more base until all the liquid has been absorbed. Spread out on a rack to dry.

It is better to treat separate portions of your base with the solution of a single chemical than to treat the base in a single mixture of various chemicals. After drying the separately treated portions of sawdust or cork waste, you can then mix them together in order to achieve distinctly colored flames.

There is no fixed proportion of chemicals to be used to a given amount of water. As much of the powdered chemical should be mixed with water as will dissolve, until you have a saturated solution. The only exception is ordinary table salt (sodium chloride), in which case you should use 1/2 ounce of salt to each pint of water.

Coarse hardwood sawdust is better than pine or other softwood sawdust as a base. Cork waste also makes an excellent base.

D-Generate

Is Potassium Nitrate explosive and thats the reason it is impossible to find in Ireland?

amen

its the nitrate bit thats the problem. IRA used to use it to make bombs.
It was available in most coops/hardware stores.
Can be very explosive but also very dangerous when producing bomb as is has a tendancy to explode when compacting

echomadman

I used to love throwing copper grindings into the fire at home to create that warm green glow

dudara

I have the most excellent old book at home that I found in a charity shop called "Chemical Magic". It demonstrates "magical" tricks that can be carried out using chemicals. It's fairly old, about 1930's I would think, and is a marvellous piece of scientific trivia

taby

Nah the best was when i was in secondary school and my teacher used to light peices of metals on fire..potassium gave a lovely colourful flame and so did sodium. :-)

I heard that a teacher in my school ( not the one that i had) blew up a bench!! So i dunno what they decided to flame der :-p

It's always fun aint it how they give u really dangerous chemicals in secondary school and stuff and don't tell u to wear gloves or anything :-p

And in college they are really strict about safety ( which i like) and take every precaution imaginable.
What does every1 else think?

Oh and does anyone else think we shud start a thread with a list of useful books which people find on subjects? say like 'Brock- Biology of Microbiology' if u wanna find out more about microbiology :-)

D-Generate

A metal like potassium in acid would blow up something, but i doubt any teacher would be that idiotic as to try that.....

taby

I dunno what happened but i have heard stories about science teachers and stuff they explode or that they tried to poision every1.....

but i'd say most science teachers are relatively sane....

its just an odd few that blow things up etc

:-p

nadir

nah its ammonium nitrate that the IRA like to blows stuff up with. Its the nitrate thats dangerous, they like mix it with an oxidant like a little bit of sugar or something like that and a bit of petrol for good measure and aweh you go.

echomadman

Potassium nitrate is one of the three ingredients of black powder (gunpowder) along with Charcoal and sulphur,
It was/is used for preserving meat,

GuanYin

careful now lads.

I don't want some idiot blowing themselves up from something they read here.

(unless they are on my death list)

Capt'n Midnight

Fertilizer Explosions in Texas City, 576 killed, and in Brest (both in 1947)
http://www.sfc.fr/Guiochon%20VO/exincendieVO.htm
There were about three thousand tons of "explosives" on board - the A-bombs dropped on japan were only four or five times bigger !
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/TT/lyt1.html

Most of the ammonium nitrate in this country comes with 20% calcium carbonate - probably 'cos the ammonia gets oxidised to nitrates by soil microbes and this would result in very acidic soils and nutrient leaching, that and it's dampening effect.

Excluding fuel-air and stuff soaked in liquid oxygen most explosives contain nitrogen. But gunpowder contains a lot of potassium - look out for the lilac colour of the flame on older low budget films for special effects for rocket motors etc. (Thunderbirds are go etc.)

If you have ever added certain compounds to hydrogen peroxid - you'll realise just how vigerous some exothermic (heat releasing) reactions can become in the presence of contaminants (and explosives are ever so slightly exothermic) - whatever about the risks of explosive manufacture and transport in spotless factiories by professionals - DIY is made especially dangerous by contamination of the ingridendients. eg. Someone in my Dad's class lost fingers.

Not sure it saltpetre is used for preserving meat , cos some nitriles are toxic (carcinogenic ?) - it was also used to supress sexuality in prisons - Kinda like whate the bromides in Coca-Cola's "filtered"designer tap water would do in the UK.

As for science teachers being sane - I know of one and the people in his class used to tell me about his anecdotes - the unerving thing was they all began with "I had a friend once who..." - not " I have a friend who once..."

Exhibit B - a post-grad I met. One day in the lab he felt a bit drowsy - nothing special about that - except yer man was mouth pipetting a cyanide solution. So as he dived towards the antidote (the old yukkie two bottle one - (amyl nitrate nowadays?)) he realised there was an open bottle of ether on the desk.

echomadman

Not sure it saltpetre is used for preserving meat , cos some nitriles are toxic (carcinogenic ?) - it was also used to supress sexuality in prisons - Kinda like whate the bromides in Coca-Cola's "filtered"designer tap water would do in the UK.

http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=3561&inst_id=13

Administrative/Biographical history: Saltpetre (also known as nitre) is potassium nitrate, a white crystalline substance used in gunpowder, in preserving meat, and medicinally. Chile saltpetre (sodium nitrate) and lime saltpetre (calcium nitrate) also occur.

my grandfather told me many stories of fishing with pipe-bombs when he was a lad. Thay used to steal the saltpetre from the butcher

dudara

Not sure it saltpetre is used for preserving meat

Are you familiar with spiced beef? It's common at Christmas time. My grandmother taught me how to cure it, and saltpetre is in the recipe.

taby

Hmmm

I know that potassium is very explosive but a very small amout can eb handled safely enough so long as it isn't put anywhere near water....*hides*

I remember the oddest thing ive ever been told about is how to make a petrol bomb in history class. We used to love our teacher rambling off like that. :-)

Yeah my old science teacher who was mad as a hatter ( pun intended keep reading) told us how he used to handle mercury back in the old days and roll it round it his hands and stuff. This was before they told him hey that's a bit dangerous now. Whoops!! and there was the time he stabbed himself in hand wit pippete pretty badly in a first yr class. A first yr girl raised her hand and asked him what was for homework. he was like 'eh...get me an ambulance...?!!'. And i heard that in my friends old school one person rubbed mercury all over the canteen desks and the whole school had to be sent home and they had men in toxic white suits cleansing the school area.

That coca cola thing i saw on the news last nite. I didn't know they were even realising bottled water but to have an unsafe amount of bromide in it is just redicuolous. As for our OWN water supply with the radioactive flouride waste in it...yes i said radioactive waste...cos its good for our teeth but if ingested over long periods of time can be VERY harmful.

Ah doesn't it make u feel better to know that most things we use in a few hundred years will be classified as dangerous or sumthin :-)

Are u guys in college??

Capt'n Midnight

Long and short of it - nasty chemicals protect meat from nastier biotoxins...

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/DJ0974.html

the fatal dose of potassium nitrate for adult humans is in the range of 30 to 35 grams consumed as a single dose; the fatal dose of sodium nitrite is in the range of 22 to 23 milligrams per kilogram of body weight

For Saltpeter 28 gramms in an ounce for the non-metric amongst us. For the Nitrite a 50 Kg person could be killed by a little over 1 gramme !

http://www.theingredientstore.com/foodpreservation/forum1/preservation.pl?read=782

Nitrite is added to certain foods to prevent the growth of the spore-forming bacterium Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin causes botulism, leading to paralysis and potentially death. Botulinum toxins are the most toxic compounds known, 15,000 times greater than nerve gas and 100,000 times greater than sarin. The word botulinum comes from the Latin word botulus, meaning sausage, which was responsible for many deaths centuries ago before cured with nitrite.
In addition to serving as an antimicrobial, nitrite is used to produce the characteristic flavor, texture, and pink color of cured meats.

Taby - you are thinking of the metal potassium - even if nowhere near water it can still catch file and burn and water won't put it out - also melts at only 63.2C (some people drink hotter coffee) so the first thing you know about it there is a ball of molten metal on fire running around - and if it's wet it will splutter - even when put out with water the resulting solution is still dangerous. Caustic burns take ages to heal (one factory where I worked there was a guy off for over six months cos the wound just kept weaping. <uggghhh>

taby

Ok i actually went and checked my old science book and it says following:

A loop was flamed and dipped in hydrocloric acid and than dipped in salt of metal and than flammed.

The colour was than noted.

I know how dangerous certain metals are. We were working with the agent which causes the effect that tear gas does and sum1 spilled it outseide fumehood and we had the guy in charge of our lab having to leave due to how bad it was. Half the class was afffected to point where they couldn't stop crying.

You have to be extremely careful when working with stuff like that. :-)

OUCH bout the factory burn...

:-/