Watch what happens when you ignite 10,000 sparklers packed in a bucket

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I counted 9,999 sparklers.

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I took one down and passed it around.

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“Something so explosive”? Sparklers? Explosive? Flammable, maybe. In this amount and in the tight configuration I may worry about deflagration-to-detonation transition, but even that not so much.

I want a Mythbusters episode where they try to ignite a sparkler by transportation-like abuse.

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So how do sparklers normally get shipped from one place to another? One by one?

I do admire their seriousness and careful preparation as well as their cat.

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Cute kitty!

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And this is why you treat metal fires with additional respect and specialized tools…

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I like the way they chose a highly flammable field of dried long grass to light it on…

If they hadn’t had fire extinguishers that could have ended very badly!

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Is Russia. No one really cares if grass catch fire.

Next time I want them to put something above it and see if it will cut through it.

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Especially metal-oxidizer fires.

Sometimes the only thing to do is to protect the surrounding structures and wait for the fire to burn out.

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“…like LAST TIME”?? O_O

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Epic music is epic!

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Time for Wapner.

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Mythbusters has mercifully been canceled, 10 years after it jumped the shark. So I guess you’ll just have to read about how they blow up.

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I’ll miss it.
Jumped the shark? Howso?

Oh, tightly confined, more confined than in the can the Russians used.

Sparkler compositions are coarse-grained, unlike the flash powders, even if they belong to the same group of Sprengel explosives.

So you get some oomph out of them but you are unlikely to get a real high-order detonation from them. The best you can hope for is a… sparkler.

…Sparkler bomb… I should try one, sometime… Now, how to measure the burning velocity and temperature in the middle of the burning bunch? Maybe put into watertight enclosure, immerse it, and measure the shock wave in the water around? And a silica optic fiber for spectral measurement of the burning temperature, until the fiber is destroyed? A kaboom is fun, a kaboom with dataloggers around is more fun…

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Came to say “Cute chief engineer”.

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When did it happen? Was it the Robin Hood episode? The Tesla Shaker? Archimedes’ mirror?

There’s so much sheer awfulness to choose from in their oeuvre… how do you choose?

Also, mad props to the Chief Engineer. I notice she was not anywhere near the rain of red-hot iron filings… smart kitty!

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They long ago ran out of actual urban myths to test. Take the first 6 shows from 2012 as an example:

  1. Duct Tape Island Survival. Not a myth in any shape or form. It’s just a proposed survival challenge.

  2. A carbon dioxide fire extinguisher can be used to repel an attack from a flamethrower. Not a myth. Just something that was in an internet video.

  3. A vehicle fitted with square wheels can provide a smooth ride if driven fast enough. Not a myth. No one believes this. No one thought it was true.

  4. Whether a group of six people in a suspended spherical cage could swing over to one side of a ravine, using only their own body weight. Not a myth. It was a movie stunt. An understanding of physics at the junior high school level is all that is needed to “bust” this.

  5. Men are better overall drivers, but break the speed limit more often. This is the sort of thing you determine by examining statistics, not by having a few people (way too few to be meaningful) drive around a track.

  6. Wearing high heels can seriously impair a person’s ability to drive. Who believes this? No one.

Only someone who cannot determine fantasy from reality would believe that many of the “myths” presented could be real.

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Yes, by all means, put burning magnesium in water. Also, can I have your stuff when your dead?

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The energy released can be calculated easily. The speed will be less than a high order detonation, otherwise the military would use magnesium-water bombs, so calculation of energy release rate with TNT as a model will give a significant safety factor.

It’s not a nuke.

Was the world taken over by scaredy cats? Does everything remotely fun have to be done in Russia these days?

No, you’d either break it or underutilize it or both. It’s already earmarked, too.

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