Hunting Hydrogen Ballons with Fireworks
- Thread starter neoprodigy
- Start date
A buddy of mine suggested doing this. He also said fill a balloon with equal parts of this and oxygen, or acetylene of oxygen. Bigger boom.
Lepisosteus platyrhincus;4855448; said:
The booms they got from these balloons were not nearly as big as the ones from the hydrogen balloons I used to blow up. It would shake the whole building and I have had them blow out lights in the surrounding rooms. I think the hydrogen in these was pretty diffused.
I like the video, specially the end.
-slowly counts to ten-
But as for the comment above, its been a while since I took physics so please excuse any mistakes, feel free to correct me.
Hydrogen doesn't explode unless mixed with oxygen and in, or near to, the correct parts.
Its the exact same as with any volatile fuel. Such as gasoline, it burns when lit. Unless it is mixed with the correct parts of oxygen.
Because the combustion of hydrogen is a reaction of hydrogen and oxygen -which creates a heat and h2o (water) - with out oxygen the hydrogen will just get warmer and warmer no matter how hot the ignition source is.
With this in mind, we can then safely assume that the more pure the Hydrogen, the less likely that it will "explode". Thus, a diffused mixture of hydrogen, which we can assume was mixed with Air (oxygen and other gasses) is more likely to create a larger -more violent- reaction. That is to say until it became extremally diffuse, where we would see little to no reaction (but at this point the gravity imposed on the balloon would surly be higher then the hydrogen ability to lift it).
As for the absurd remark that a hydrogen balloon could ever explode and cause the lights to go out in the surrounding rooms...
This is a standard explosion, like we saw in the videos.
[yt]nYhWH1HRqo4[/yt]
Since we can see and hear the explosion that tells us a few things, first off the shock wave wasn't even powerful enough to deflate the diaphragm on the video camera's mic. So inorder to break the glass in the next room you would need something larger then 1,000 times more powerful, and pressurized (since its a balloon).
1) For the explosion to have a strong enough shock wave to have not be disrupted by the fire rated walls in your school, I have no doubt that you would have serious if not completely destroyed ear drums. Not to mention the level of shock your body would have been in, infact I'd be willing to bet and explosion big enough to break the lights in the next room would be strong enough to kill a person at <5 feet
2) its my understanding that hydrogen needs to be mixed with oxygen to explode, as stated above. So the amount of pressure the balloon would need to sustain in order to pressurized it with an oxygen/hydrogen mix would be far above that of the canisters which would be providing the hydrogen.
3) its also my understanding that balloons arnt very good at holding anything smaller then oxygen, which hydrogen is...and even in that case oxygen isn't held very well either. The molecular bonds are just not strong enough to contain it normally, and under pressure this would quickly become a problem and it would almost be impossible to manage. This is why hydrogen bombs have a metal core, not a rubber one.
4) the heat resulting in an explosion that size would no doubt be high enough to have caused serious burns and tissue damage.
I could go on and on, but I actually just want you to say you weren't lying.
-slowly counts to ten-
But as for the comment above, its been a while since I took physics so please excuse any mistakes, feel free to correct me.
Hydrogen doesn't explode unless mixed with oxygen and in, or near to, the correct parts.
Its the exact same as with any volatile fuel. Such as gasoline, it burns when lit. Unless it is mixed with the correct parts of oxygen.
Because the combustion of hydrogen is a reaction of hydrogen and oxygen -which creates a heat and h2o (water) - with out oxygen the hydrogen will just get warmer and warmer no matter how hot the ignition source is.
With this in mind, we can then safely assume that the more pure the Hydrogen, the less likely that it will "explode". Thus, a diffused mixture of hydrogen, which we can assume was mixed with Air (oxygen and other gasses) is more likely to create a larger -more violent- reaction. That is to say until it became extremally diffuse, where we would see little to no reaction (but at this point the gravity imposed on the balloon would surly be higher then the hydrogen ability to lift it).
As for the absurd remark that a hydrogen balloon could ever explode and cause the lights to go out in the surrounding rooms...
This is a standard explosion, like we saw in the videos.
[yt]nYhWH1HRqo4[/yt]
Since we can see and hear the explosion that tells us a few things, first off the shock wave wasn't even powerful enough to deflate the diaphragm on the video camera's mic. So inorder to break the glass in the next room you would need something larger then 1,000 times more powerful, and pressurized (since its a balloon).
1) For the explosion to have a strong enough shock wave to have not be disrupted by the fire rated walls in your school, I have no doubt that you would have serious if not completely destroyed ear drums. Not to mention the level of shock your body would have been in, infact I'd be willing to bet and explosion big enough to break the lights in the next room would be strong enough to kill a person at <5 feet
2) its my understanding that hydrogen needs to be mixed with oxygen to explode, as stated above. So the amount of pressure the balloon would need to sustain in order to pressurized it with an oxygen/hydrogen mix would be far above that of the canisters which would be providing the hydrogen.
3) its also my understanding that balloons arnt very good at holding anything smaller then oxygen, which hydrogen is...and even in that case oxygen isn't held very well either. The molecular bonds are just not strong enough to contain it normally, and under pressure this would quickly become a problem and it would almost be impossible to manage. This is why hydrogen bombs have a metal core, not a rubber one.
4) the heat resulting in an explosion that size would no doubt be high enough to have caused serious burns and tissue damage.
I could go on and on, but I actually just want you to say you weren't lying.
WOW. . . . . .now my brain hurts ~ ~ ~ 
~ ~ ~ (oh well, at least when it hurts I know it's still in there . . . . somewhere) Haven't had to think about anything THAT HARD in quite a while.
~ ~ ~ (oh well, at least when it hurts I know it's still in there . . . . somewhere) Haven't had to think about anything THAT HARD in quite a while.