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What was your favorite course of study? (yeah, it's biased -- do your best!)
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Fascinating is a word I use for the unexpected.
-- Spock, "The Squire of Gothos", stardate 2124.5
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday January 12 2018, @04:35PM (3 children)
I too liked Chemistry.
I ended up taking Chemistry at the local college after I graduated HS. They actually had real nice equipment and it made the experience so much better. I really enjoyed it and still think about doing it all over again just for fun.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 12 2018, @08:04PM (2 children)
No need for classes. All the information you'll ever need is online for free. Really, once you have a few gallons of nitric acid, the world's your oyster as far as things that go boom are concerned. I wouldn't advise trying home brewed peroxide-based explosives though. TATP, for instance, is damned nifty but it's also a good way to lose a hand.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @09:28PM
What I learned in H.S. Chem... Table salt, melt it, add a couple DC electrodes, that's all you need. Just don't throw the stuff in a swimming pool.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:43PM
Avoid all contact with metal, particularly copper-containing metal.
Start with half a cup of 6% peroxide. Add 2 tablespoons and 2/3 teaspoon of crushed hexamethylene tablets, commonly available as wax-coated solid fuel pellets for camp stoves. Stir to dissolve, and start to cool the mix with an ice bath. Add a quarter cup of citric acid. Stir to dissolve. Immediately filter it, keeping to liquid, to get rid of undissolved crap like wax. Let the liquid sit for a day or two, so that crystals form. Filter it again, this time keeping the crystals. Wash it several times with water, then with alcohol. Let it dry.
You should have about 4.5 grams of white powder. It is enough to blow a hole 1/4-inch deep into a concrete floor. I never got it to go off by hitting it with a hammer, so it is decently safe. It ignites easily. It will transition to Mach 25 detonation if you slightly confine it, for example in a pen cap that isn't even sealed up. Spread thin it just flashes like gunpowder, but add a shaving of wood on top and it'll detonate.
Unlike TATP, it won't sublime and thus get all over. Like TATP, it degrades, becoming inert after a few weeks.
Advice for keeping your body intact, unlike mine: if you are fucking around with it, doing stuff like igniting tiny bits of it with a shaving of wood on top to cause detonation, be aware that detonation shock waves can propagate to a larger container that might be sitting nearby.