Nitrocellulose Explosion and Fireballs

Comment if you jumped at the bang!

Nitrocellulose is a form of cotton where the hydroxide groups have been replaces with nitrate groups, making it extremely flammable.  I made this by soaking forms of cotton in a 2:1 volume mixture of concentrated sulfuric and nitric acid for 15 minutes.  I neutralized the nitrocellulose thoroughly with saturated baking soda water and then rinsed that well with normal water.  It is fairly stable and has not degraded after months of storage.

I successfully detonated nitrocellulose by packing it into a spent brass shell casing.  I used an exploding bridgewire detonator (previous video: ) to initiate the detonation.  I stayed in another room for the detonation, so I was safe from potential harm.  There were some pieces of brass shrapnel that penetrated the cardboard box, so it is good that I wasn't nearby.  :)

More details available at:
http://sciencewithscreens.blogspot.co...

WARNING: The experiments demonstrated in this video are solely for entertainment purposes.  Do not attempt to replicate anything shown in this video.  I will not be held liable for inconvenience, injury, loss of liberty, or death caused by misuse of the information in this video.

Soundtrack:
"Summer Day" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

• #science_technology
• #nitrocellulose
• #explosion
• #detonation
• #flash_cotton
• #flash_paper
• #how_to
• #make
• #chemistry
• #nitric
• #acid
• #sulfuric
• #sulphuric
• #fire
• #fireball
• #ball
• #flames
• #burn
• #string
• #fuze
• #fuse
• #cotton
• #cottonball
• #spiral
• #nitrate
• #nitration