Got a bit warm at work today.

[Jonny69]

Bottle rocket day today. Here's how it went, me lighting it:

Note me engulfed in fire and the wall on fire at the end. I'll post the video when I've edited the swear words out. Methanol makes petrol look like cat pee

Edit: video can be found by searching Youtube for "Methanol powered bottle rocket" but I can't post it here due to swearies I'm too l33t to be able edit out.

 

[Jonny69]

Yep, special effects. I'm fine, it was just a whoof

 

[Jonny69]

Search on Youtube for methanol bottle rocket and you'll find the video but it's full of swearies so I think I'm bending the rules on here by saying that. See what the mods think, if I'm on holiday when I get back they didn't like it, and I'll have to find a way of editing it out

 

[Jonny69]

Either way for the explosion it created it didn't go very far.

It burned through the line and bounced off the wall at the other end.

 

[Jonny69]

Other than having a damn hoot, what was the purpose of the experiment?

I wish i worked somewhere i could do stuff like that, well maby not set fire to myself.

I would love a job on the likes of Myth busters

It's for a science series that's going on TV in the near future, a bit like the Richard Hammond engineering series we just had, only a bit more serious.

Dont give him any ideas on how to make the end smaller so it forces the bottle further lol.

It's pretty good already actually. Much smaller and the jet stream would be too fast and concentrated and it wouldn't shoot itself along very well, any bigger and the pressure wouldn't get up high enough to get a decent burn speed. The way to look at it is the neck on those bottles is probably an optimum size for filling/emptying that volume and it's well tapered, hence it's pretty good for this demo.

That was epic.

Now...where to get methanol...

eBay, it's cheap too