Slashdot Mirror
Fun with Fog Generators
BoomZilla writes "Only
10 or so shopping days to Halloween. If you're at a loss for a project
this weekend check out gotfog.com for
a full set of detailed instructions on the construction of a Fog
chiller. "What's a fog chiller?" you may ask. And rightly so.
Let me explain. A fog machine dumps fog juice on a heating plate to
produce oodles of the white, floaty stuff. Problem is that it doesn't
hug the ground like you see in the movies. An alternative that is employed
to create the ground-hugging variety of fog is a dry ice machine (which
heats up dry ice and disperses the resultant cloud of fog). The problem is
that dry ice is (a) expensive and (b) not always that easy to get. Enter
the fog chiller. The chiller can be built very inexpensively (major cost
is the sacrifice of a largish cooler) and works with a regular fog machine
that consumes low-cost fog juice. Go on, give it a try. You know you want
to. And just imagine the look on the faces of your little ghouls and
ghosts come the 31st when your house looks like boot hill on steroids."
I wish you would talk to me.
(c) could get you put on a list of suspected pot growers faster than a subscription to High Times.
Why is Triangle Man so MEAN?
In only a few hours, I will be helping in the construction of one of these! We already have all of the materials.
:)
Glow sticks and some tin foil reflectors make for good glowing green fog, by the way.
Heh... they'll need a lot more than a Fog Chiller to cool down their overheating processors as the /. wave hits ;)
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
My friend bought a fog machine for his dorm room last year, and because he thought his fire alarm was heat and not particle detecting, he filled his room with fog. Turns out, it was a particle detector after all, the fire alarm went off, school security came and made fun of him mercilessly for intentionally filling a room with smoke... then they wrote him up. It was funny...
Once upon a time...
Those are just fumes coming off a BSD kernel developer!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
The problem is that dry ice is (a) expensive and (b) not always that easy to get.
He obviously hasn't heard of the wonder which I like to call a "grocery store." It's sold at most supermarkets for $0.99/lb. around here...
This chilled fog could be useful for overclocking! Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
And just imagine the look on the faces of your little ghouls and ghosts come the 31st when your house looks like boot hill on steroids.
:)
Or you could just use mustard gas instead of some silly fog, that'll teach the little buggers right enough and betcha they wont come around bothering you the next year anymore.
The problem with dry ice is there are organised networks that specialise in stealing it. I've tried to dry ice several times (by leaving it out in the sun) and when I got back it was all gone.
RMN
~~~
Here's the Google cache of the page on building a fog chiller.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
And gosh, come to think of it, who'd ever have thought that smoke coming out of your case was an indication of a successful mod?
Expensive? Hard to find?
I think you're on crack. Grocery stores sell dry ice for about a dollar per pound.
--
grep "xercist"
the site seems to be slashdotted now (is this happening more frequently than it used to?)
but here are plans to build your own fog/smoke machine http://www.juggling.org/help/misc/fog.html
A couple years ago I was working at Guitar Center and our store manager had just been promoted to regional manager so we had a new manager coming in. They went out to lunch to go over some store specifics and one of them employees decided to break out the fog machine and fill up the new managers office. They came back from lunch everyone said their goodbyes and he left. The new manager introduced himself to everyone then went into the back to check out his office. Bye now the room was absolutely packed with "strawberry" fog, he opened the door, walked in, and sat down like nothing was wrong. :)
sig.
Packing the chiller with ice, then shoving some dry ice inside the cooling tube works a little better. The dry ice cools the fog, and the regular ice keeps the dry ice from evaporating too fast.
OOh, finally, something on Slashdot that I can comment authoritatively on! (I'm a stagehand, and often use atmospheric effects)
I would just like to refute the posters assertations about dry ice foggers. Firstly, dry ice is certainly NOT expensive. Prices usually fall in the $0.50 to $1.00 / lb range, depending on the form (block, pellets, etc.) and supplier. Which brings me to the second point, availability - Go to your local grocery store. If they don't have it (most in southern and western states usually will), they'll be able to tell you who will.
Once you have the dry ice (I'd suggest about 25-35 lbs. for a good, long show), it's very easy to turn it into fog. Step 1 - pour hot water over it. Step 2 - there is no step 2! There are many many pre-made machines for this purpose, such as the City Theatrical Aquafogger, which are available for rental, but it's such a simple device, anyone here should easily be able to make one on their own.
The basic things you need are as follows - a barrel - big enough to hold the dry ice, plus all the hot water that will be poured through it. A basket, to hold the dry ice in, above the level of the water. A fan and a tube, to take the resultant fog, and put it where you want it (dryer hose works very well for this). And finally, a method for pouring large amounts of very hot water over the dry ice - the faster the rate of pour, the faster the sublimation of the dry ice, and hence, the larger the volume of fog generated. For the water-pouring, something as simple as a 5-gallon pail is quite sufficient.
One down side to a dry-ice fogger, however - that 25lb load will only last about 10 minutes, and the fog only a few minutes longer than that. If the effect that you're looking for is a long-lasting, room-filling, hanging haze, then you'll be better off with an oil-based fogger. (Just avoid prolonged breathing of concentrated amounts of the fog - it's been shown to produce many respiratory ailments - and that was the professional stuff)
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
I've always wanted to find cannabis oil, if such a thing exists - imagine, a few drops of that, mixed with the fog juice - man, what a party!!
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
The problem with dry ice is that it's dangerous (CO2 asphyxiation) in closed areas, and outdoors nothing will work terribly well.
I've put up a mirror of the special projects page at gotfog.com, as well as the "making fog hug the ground" and "vortex" special projects. The mirror should be significantly faster than the original, and can be found at http://www.msu.edu/~brownd41/mirror/gotfog/index.h tml
I built one of these for my drama class in high school. The problem was, we used DRY ICE as the chilling mechanism for the fog. Blow fog though a cooler full of dry ice, and it'll chill down pretty fast. The good news about this is 1) no water from regular ice. 2) dont need much dry ice. We found that 1-2 pounds of the stuff was more than sufficent to last us through a day of competition. Plus, you can toss some pennies on it for a neat metal contracting sound. The problem we ran into was forcing the fog through with the correct speed to both chill the fog into hugging the floor and also producing any kind of fog volume. We fixed that with a fan from radio shak wired into a battery pack so it would be portable enough. After that the only problem was rolling huge blankets of fog off the edge of the stage and into the audience.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the abovementioned web site.
Warning: Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is offtopic but oh well.
A friend of mine has a fog machine he bought just for fun. I was staying the night with him once, and we got it out. We played with it all night, and set off the smoke detector about 5 times starting at 1 in the morning. His parents were pissed. Good time, good times.
Actualy, Samhain is one of 8 pegan sabbat days. There are both major and minor sabbats. The major sabbats are Samhain (Oct. 31), Imbolc (Feb. 2), Beltane (Apr. 30), and Lammas (Aug. 1). The minor sabbats are the two equinoxes of March 21 and September 21st and the two solstices on December 21, (the longest night of the year) and June 21 (the shortest night of the year. The celtic people devided the year into two parts, summer and winter. Samhain is the end of the summer half of the year and is also considered to be the first of the new year. Samhain meens 'Summers End'. Samhain is a day to honor the dead, not worship evil. For more information you can search for Samhain on google or go to religioustolerance.org
What grocery store is that? how do they provide it? what kind of container do they ship it in? where are they getting it? are they making it in the store?
I've never seen a grocery store that sells dry ice (though I've seen them have some around because of dairy shipments that arrive with a few bricks of it to keep things cool)
Dry ice shouldn't be too expensive if you get it from your local industrial chemical supply store (A place that sekks propane, helium, dry ice, etc) . Dry ice is probably more expensive from a party outlet.
Last halloween I bought several pounds of dry ice from a local industrial chemical supply store for about $15 total. I placed the dry ice in a cheap black 5 gallon "witches cauldron", which I got from the local Haloween store.
To create the fog, I simply placed the ice in the cauldron, and periodically added warm water when I saw trick-or-treaters. The warm water melts the ice, and you get fog.
The dry-ice provided enough fog rolling down my front steps to freak out the neighborhood kids. This fog lasted approximately 4 hours.
For added effect, I placed a couple of those green and red glow sticks inside the cauldron (Since glow sticks glow less when cold, I placed the sticks on a pedestal above the cold ice and water), replaced my porch light with a black light, and added a bunch of those green-spiderwebs from the halloween store.
This gave the whole porch a nice eerie glow, especially with the green-glow eminating from the cauldron.
Whole cost of this operation, including dry ice $15 for several pounds), cauldron ($5 at halloween store), black light ($2 at hardware store), glow sticks ($2 each) and spiderwebs ($3 a pack) was probably $25. I'm going to do the same thing this year.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Well... Not to prolong a flammable argument, but regardless of faiths, we all have to agree that holidays are celebrated, partly out of tradition and partly out of a response to human need.
If you're going the fundamentalist route, then you might want to boycott Christmas, too - Jesus wasn't born on December 25th - this date was used as a convenience, because it coincided with many non-Christian solstice festivals. (It made it easier to convert the heathens if you could show them how similar your religion was to theirs - not too much change is needed).
I'm just suggesting that for holidays, 'sometimes a cigar is just a cigar'. Relax, and have fun. I can guarantee you that any children out there who turn to Satanism aren't influenced by Halloween.
Use an ice chest with vents cut in both ends, filled with ice (or dry ice) and place the fog machine inlet close to the outlet of the ice chest.
You can adjust the amount of chill/use of ice by moving the fogger inlet closer or farther from the vent.
Design your own and make a web page to get slashdotted!
"Only 10 or so shopping days to Halloween." I never really thought of this as an issue...
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
I wonder how many people will call the police thinking their next door neighbor's house is on fire...
Horror Theatre. Scary stuff, kids. Ah-ah-oo!
This method seems a lot better than the smelly method my friend used to use: turn the oven on low until it was dry.
Plenty of it around. It certainly makes oodles of thick, ground-hugging fog, especially on a humid or drizzling day. Careful not to "burn" yourself with it, though.
Seems to be drawing the flamebaits pretty well
For those about to become embarrased by saying Samhain out loud, it is generally pronounced as "So-wen" or "Sah-wen" (or sometimes "Sha-wayn" or "Sho-ween") due to some funky grammar that I can't completely grasp in its entirety. For a simple nmemonic, or whatever this might be called, flip the m upside-down to a w and then pronounce. Easy, no? I won't make spelling comments, since I'm on a laptop with a strange keyboard...
:-)
Yes, it is kind of funny how the replies go up in their default moderation points.
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
oh, your talking about that day that was adopted by modern paganism.
If there weren't any IP laws, you could have a huge amount of fog quickly. All slashdotters want all IP laws banned.
I am a theatrical sound & lighting designer and these are the fog products that I have used for years ... but it might be more fun to build one yourself. :-)
Rosco Fog Products
Use a little dry ice in a tube, put the tube in front of the fog machine, the dry ice cools the fog and adds some of its own. I just did this for a play I was stage managing. Makes great cooled fog. Heck, even regular ice will work. As long as the fog passes over something cool, it will cool down and hug the ground.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Mirror with as many images as wget could fetch. The box can't handle much load, but every little bit helps.
My father used to (jokingly) complain about neighborhood kids on our lawn. (There never were, which was part of the joke.) Then he would confide that he knew the perfect way to keep them off the lawn.
Land mines.
"Tough on that first kid, but they learn quickly," he'd add.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
It is funny how many people actually think this. Then when you ask them where they checked on prices lately, "I heard it from a friend". I have purchased dry ice a few times over the past few years for camping trips to keep some perishables cool. I usually pay less then $0.75/lb. Here is an example for a company in Tampa, FL. http://www.dryicesales.com/products.htm
Ran a horror chaimber once using the ol' dry ice + hot water trick but noticed a cool effect along the way. ...
The blocks of dry ice we had were quite large, large enough to take the full blades of the replica swords we had (and convenient to run through, at least compared to the consequences of trying on customers...). If we left the blades in the ice for a couple of minutes they'd be completely coated with a layer. When you took the blade out you get a small scale fog effect coming off the sword - very impressive if you've always dreamed of having an enchanted sword (reality has always let me down on this).
A little experimentation showed this to work on just about anything (coolest was the swords though). A black leather glove was also effective (up to the point fragments started falling inside
It's not that I'm Anti-American - I'm Pro-Freedom
Great story goes with this:
I had the fogger/chiller setup behind a large rectangular evergreen bush in front of my front porch. A little bare area right between the bush and the steps was decorated with 2 rather convincing headstones, and one of those battery powered hands that wriggles, buried partially and sticking straight up, like someone crawling out of their grave. It was lit by a red floodlight, and looked fairly scary. I also had tons of other gruesome stuff of course.
I would hide inside by the bedroom window, with the remote, and hit the fog when trick or treaters walked up. My wife would answer the door.
This one little girl walks up, apparently alone, and I hit the fog button. I got a really super nice blast, so thick in fact, that even with the chiller it rose up some and I could no longer see the little girl.. when the smoke cleared, she was gone ! heh.. overkill, oh well.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
You're just trying to distract people from the fact that Snickers mini-bites are EVIL! EVIL I tell you! Don't deny it! Three giant sacks of Snickers mini-bites calling to you, reaching out longingly, 17,000 calories per sack, and then you wake up on November 21st and you've transformed into someone else and can't fit into your clothes any more. Happens every goddamned year, so don't you tell me they ain't EVIL!
Built mine last week - saw the plans last year on http://www.halloween-magazine.com/sfx/index.html, and thought it'd be a good idea if it actually worked. I haven't tried it with a full cooler of ice (used 20 lbs, filled about half), but there was a noticable "low lying" quality to the fog, and I expect even better results when I have a full cooler, or one with dry ice. Well worth the $25-$30 total price tag.
On the subject of dry ice, there are several posts talking about dry ice being "cheap" at $1 a pound. Sure, $1 isn't very expensive, until you realize that in order to have party/stage effects, and fog for the duration of an evening of trick-or-treaters or a party, you're going to need at least 100lbs of the stuff. At that, it's not even a thick/can't see through it amount, it's just the "creepy fog" effect. As ShinmaWa noted, you'd need upwards of hundreds of pounds for a true movie like effect. Sufficently chilled fog through a cooler (while not as think as dry ice fog) will run you less than $20 in fog juice.
I don't know about you, but spending hundreds on one night of fog is expensive for me, and is probably expensive for most people.
With fog rolling out the doors, my Scooby-Doo Van will be complete!
In only a few hours, I will be helping in the construction of one of these! We already have all of the materials.
A fog chiller like this will work almost as well as a professional one. The professional fog coolers essentially blow the fog through an refrigerator evaporator.
Halloween of 1994, I had the police at my house 6 times, each time with them begging me to stop doing what I was doing... he so badly wanted a reason to arrest me, but could think of none.
Picture it: The doorbell was connected through an optocoupler to my computer's keyboard. Everytime the doorbell rang, there was a pause (as the stereo audio file loaded) then a loud scream played from a speaker (left) hidden in the trunk of one of the cars in the driveway. The right channel had a nasty kind of chewing sound, and it was played through a speaker hidden in the engine compartment of another car which was parked close to the door.
My roommate and I were car nuts, and we had a junked Toyota that we were waiting for the scrapyard to haul off. With the chain hoist, we put it on its side in the front yard, with a mannequin's arm sticking out from underneath. We hooked its electrical system up to a car battery charger and left some of the parking lights on, with a turnblinker flashing and the AM radio playing quietly inside.
I was working in the professional sound and lighting business then, so I borrowed a fog machine, fog chiller and 6,000 watts of Leko stagelighting.
The fog machine and the chiller from work went outside to provide a ground mist, but not too much. I needed for the kids to see, by the light of the flashing signal, the arm sticking out from under the Toyota.
The Lekos and my own fog machine were set up inside. The Leko dimmer pack was powered off the 40 amp 240V service to the stove outlet, and all 6 lights, at 1000W apiece, were pointed and focused to a point 1 foot outside of my front door.
And then there was the chainsaw. Beg, borrow, steal or rent a chainsaw. Take off the chain and protect the kids from the potentially sharp edge of the chain guide with a rubber edging like people use around the outlines of their car doors.
The Spectacle:
Mom or Dad would stand at the end of the driveway as Little Tommy would walk past the Toyota with the flashing lights and the arm poking out of the ground mist.
Little Tommy, dressed in his finest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume would press the doorbell. He'd hear the ring of the bell, then a couple of seconds later, the scream from the trunk of one of the cars he'd just passed. Gradually, he'd become aware of a wet chewing sound right behind him.
If Little Tommy was still standing at the door by the time I got downstairs, he'd be greeted to the sound of the door opening, and a wall of fog in front of him; invisible foggy blackness.
Of course, wearing black and a black ski mask, I'd be standing there watching the look of fear on the kid's face as it flashed on and off in time with the doomed Toyota's right turn. And then, just when we thought Tommy was getting ready to leave, Mike would kick the foot-pedal that turned on all 6kW of stagelights, focused right at the kid's face.
Blinded and disoriented, Little Tommy would start to retreat as I started up the chainsaw. And his first sight of me would be the silhouette, through the fog, of a black shadow with a running gas chainsaw.
Frozen, the kid would stand there, a deer caught in the headlights, as the chainsaw-wielding black shadow pressed the blade of the saw to his neck and revved the motor.
Of course at this point, the parent, standing at the end of the driveway, would feel that Little Tommy was in mortal danger, scream, drop the bag of candy, and attempt to rescue him from the chainsaw which would have already taken off the kid's head if it still had a chain.
The next morning, I had 4 broken windows, hate messages spray-painted onto the side of my roommate's car, the smell of two-cycle oil in my living room, and a hell of a lot of toilet paper and broken eggs to clean up. But I only had to give out 1/2 bag of candies, so I think I did okay.
Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Someone else has already said that this is finally a topic that they can contribute to, but I've been generating a nice, low-lying, thick and clingy fog for my "haunted yard" for the past 8 years.
...
... pass the fog through a cooler of wet ice (some cooling, but significant humidification), THEN pass it through an aluminum duct (flexible dryer ducting works best) full (to half-height) of dry ice (that's chilling) ... solves all of the world's fog problems.
The "classic" fog chiller, using coolers, fans and regular ice is a good start, but misses the key points for cold environments.
In order to make a thick, low-lying fog using a cheap fog machine, you need to do two things (particularly here in Canada, where we often get Halloween close to freezing):
1) Humidify the fog (often forgotten)
2) Cool the fog below the ambient temperature
The classic technique accomplishes both of these by passing the fog through a cooler of "wet" ice. As my friends in New England and Minnesota know, this don't do squat when the ambient temperature is around freezing
So
But, remember:
1) Don't cuddle with the dry ice
2) Don't use any of this to cool a processor
Most of this discussion seems to have veered off onto how cheaply you can get dry ice. Over here in the UK it is used rarely for theatrical effects, for many reasons.
It's awkward to store, and will sublime even in a freezer. The room you store it in needs to be ventilated or dangerous levels of C02 can build up.
It's hard to control. Most people just pour hot water onto it. There are some better commercial devices that heat water or whatever, but it is hard to turn the fog on and off.
It stays for a long time. Quite often people want the low lying fog to go before the next scene. Dry ice based fog remains for a long time.
Fog chillers however don't have these problems. Yes, the fluid for them costs a fair bit (up to £60 for 5 litres), but you can control the flow, density, and type of fog. Some machines will do chilled fog, smoke, and haze (very low level smoke, used to show beams of light). You can sit at the other end of the room and control it remotely using DMX. It disperses very quickly as well, so when you kill the machine, the fog is gone very very quickly.
Saying this, there are now machines that use C02 cylinders which solve a lot of the problems of solid dry ice.
Dry ice is also better for on stage effects (witches cauldron) and practical jokes. We tipped a lot of C02 pellets down a toilet once, and found it quite funny when all the other toilets in the block started bubbling and smoking.
is in a 'fog' from the Slashdot effect. Hahahaha. Quip I do. Qyuip I do.
Frog generators!
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
The Origins of Halloween
... We see that this holiday has its origin, basis and root in the occultic Druid celebration of the dead. Only they called it 'Samhain', who was the Lord of the Dead (a big demon)".1 When these books and pamphlets cite sources at all, they usually list the Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Americana, and the World Book Encyclopedia. The Britannica and the Americana make no mention of cats, but do indeed list Samhain as the Lord of Death, contrary to Celtic scholars, and list no references. The World Book mentions the cats and calls Samhain the Lord of Death, and lists as its sources several children's books (hardly what one could consider scholarly texts, and, of course, themselves citing no references).
... the evidence for the cat as an important cult animal in Celtic mythology is slight".9 She cites as supporting evidence the lack of archaeological artifacts and literary references in surviving works of mythology.
copyright © 1989, Rowan Moonstone
In recent years, there have been a number of pamphlets and books put out be various Christian organizations dealing with the origins of modern-day Halloween customs.
Being a Witch myself, and a student of the ancient Celts from whom we get this holiday, I have found these pamphlets woefully inaccurate and poorly researched. A typical example of this information is contained in the following quote from the pamphlet entitled "What's Wrong with Halloween?" by Russell K. Tardo. "The Druids believed that on October 31st, the last day of the year by the ancient Celtic calendar, the lord of death gathered together the souls of the dead who had been made to enter bodies of animals, and decided what forms they should take the following year. Cats were held sacred because it was believed that they were once human beings
In an effort to correct some of this erroneous information, I have researched the religious life of the ancient Celtic peoples and the survivals of that religious life in modern times. Listed below are some of the most commonly asked questions concerning the origins and customs of Halloween. Following the questions is a lengthy bibliography where the curious reader can go to learn more about this holiday than space in this small pamphlet permits.
1.
Where does Halloween come from?
Our modern celebration of Halloween is a descendent of the ancient Celtic festival called "Samhain". The word is pronounced "sow-in", with "sow" rhyming with "cow".
2.
What does "Samhain" mean?
The "Irish-English Dictionary" published by the Irish Texts Society defines the word as follows: "Samhain, All Hallowtide, the feast of the dead in Pagan and Christian times, signalling the close of harvest and the initiation of the winter season, lasting till May, during which troop swere quartered. Fairies were imagined as particularly active at this season. From it, the half-year is reckoned. Also called Feile Moingfinne (Snow Goddess)."2 The "Scottish Gaelic Dictionary" defines it as "Hallowtide. The Feast of All Souls. Sam + Fuin = end of summer."3 Contrary to the information published by many organizations, there is no archaeological or literary evidence to indicate that Samhain was a deity. Eliade's "Encyclopedia of Religion" states as follows: "The Eve and day of Samhain were characterized as a time when the barriers between the human and supernatural worlds were broken... Not a festival honoring any particular Celtic deity, Samhain acknowledged the entire spectrum of nonhuman forces that roamed the earth during that period."4 The Celtic Gods of the dead were Gwynn ap Nudd for the British and Arawn for the Welsh. The Irish did not have a "Lord of Death" as such.
3.
Why was the end of summer of significance to the Celts?
The Celts were a pastoral people as opposed to an agricultural people. The end of summer was significant to them because it meant the time of year when the structure of their lives changed radically. The cattle were brought down from the summer pastures in the hills and the people were gathered into the houses for the long winter nights of story-telling and handicrafts.
4.
What does it have to do with a festival of the dead?
The Celts believed that when people died, they went to a land of eternal youth and happiness called Tír na nOg. They did not have the concept of Heaven and Hell that the Christian Church later brought into the land. The dead were sometimes believed to be dwelling with the Fairy Folk, who lived in the numerous mounds, or sidhe, (pronounced "shee" or "sh-thee") that dotted the Irish and Scottish countryside. Samhain was the new year to the Celts. In the Celtic belief system, turning points such as the time between one day and the next, the meeting of sea and shore or the turning of one year into the next, were seen as magickal times. The turning of the year was the most potent of these times. This was the time when the "veil between the worlds" was at its thinnest and the living could communicate with their beloved dead in Tír na nOg.
5.
What about the aspects of "evil" that we associate with the night today?
The Celts did not have demons and devils in their belief system. The fairies, however, were often considered hostile and dangerous to humans because they were seen as being resentful of man taking over their land. On this night, they would sometimes trick humans into becoming lost in the fairy mounds where they would be trapped forever. After the coming of the Christians to the Celtic lands, certain of the folk saw the fairies as those angels who had sided neither with God or with Lucifer in their dispute and thus were condemned to walk the Earth until Judgment Day.5 In addition to the fairies, many humans were abroad on this night causing mischief. Since this night belonged neither to one year or the other, Celtic folk believed that chaos reigned and the people would engage in "horseplay and practical jokes".6 This also served as a final outlet for high spirits before the gloom of winter set in.
6.
What about "trick or treat"?
During the course of these hijinks, many of the people would imitate the fairies and go from house to house begging for treats. Failure to supply the treats would usually result in practical jokes being visited on the owner of the house. Since the fairies were abroad on this night, an offering of food or milk was frequently left for them on the steps of the house so the homeowner could gain the blessing of the "good folk" for the coming year. Many of the households would also leave out a "dumb supper" for the spirits of the departed.7 The folks who were abroad in the night imitating the fairies would sometimes carry turnips carved to represent faces. This is the origin of our modern Jack-o-lantern.
7.
Was there any special significance of cats to the Celts?
According to Katherine Briggs in "Nine Lives: Cats in Folklore", the Celts associated cats with the Cailleach Bheur, or Blue Hag of Winter. "She was a nature goddess, who herded the deer as her cattle. The touch of her staff drove the leaves off the trees and brought snow and harsh weather."8 Dr. Anne Ross addresses the use of divine animals in her book "Pagan Celtic Britain" and has this to say about cats: "Cats do not play a large role in Celtic mythology
8.
Was this also a religious festival?
Yes. Celtic religion was very closely tied to the Earth. The great legends are concerned with momentous happenings which took place around the time of Samhain. Many of the great battles and legends of kings and heroes center on this night. Many of the legends concern the promotion of fertility of the Earth and the insurance of the continuance of the lives of the people through the dark winter season.
9.
How was the religious festival observed?
Unfortunately, we know very little about that. W.G. Wood-Martin, in his book "Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland", states: "There is comparatively little trace of the religion of the Druids now discoverable, save in the folklore of the peasantry and the references relative to it that occur in ancient and authentic Irish manuscripts are, as far as present appearances go, meager and insufficient to support anything like a sound theory for full development of the ancient religion."10 The Druids were the priests of the Celtic peoples. They passed on their teachings by oral tradition instead of committing them to writing, so when they perished, most of their religious teachings were lost. We do know that this festival was characterized as one of the four great "Fire Festivals" of the Celts. Legends tell us that on this night all the hearth fires in Ireland were extinguished and then re-lit from the central fire of the Druids at Tlachtga, 12 miles from the royal hill of Tara. This fire was kindled from "need fire" which had been generated by the friction of rubbing two sticks together, as opposed to more conventional methods (such as the flint-and-steel method) common in those days.11 The extinguishing of the fires symbolized the "dark half" of the year, and the re-kindling from the Druidic fires was symbolic of the returning life hoped for and brought about through the ministrations of the priesthood.
10.
What about sacrifices?
Animals were certainly killed at this time of year. This was the time to "cull" from the herds those animals which were not desired for breeding purposes for the next year. Most certainly, some of these would have been done in a ritual manner for the use of the priesthood.
11.
Were humans sacrificed?
Scholars are sharply divided on this account, with about half believing that it took place and half doubting its veracity. Caesar and Tacitus certainly tell tales of the human sacrifices of the Celts, but Nora Chadwick points out in her book "The Celts" that "it is not without interest that the Romans themselves had abolished human sacrifice not long before Caesar's time, and references to the practice among various barbarian peoples have certain overtones of self-righteousness. There is little direct archaeological evidence relevant to Celtic sacrifice."12 Indeed, there is little reference to this practice in Celtic literature. The only surviving story echoes the tale of the Minotaur in Greek legend: the Fomorians, a race of evil giants said to inhabit portions of Ireland before the coming of the Tuatha Dé Danann (or "people of the Goddess Danu"), demanded the sacrifice of 2/3 of the corn, milk and first-born children of the Fir Bolg, or human inhabitants of Ireland. The Tuatha Dé Danann ended this practice in the second battle of Moy Tura, which incidentally, took place on Samhain. It should be noted, however, that this story appears in only one (relatively modern) manuscript from Irish literature, and that manuscript, the "Dinnsenchus", is known to be a collection of fables. According to P.W. Joyce in Vol. 2 of his "Social History of Ancient Ireland", "Scattered everywhere through our ancient literature, both secular and ecclesiastical, we find abundant descriptions and details of the rites and superstitions of the pagan Irish; and in no place -- with this single exception -- do we find a word or hint pointing to human sacrifice to pagan gods or idols."13
12.
What other practices were associated with this season?
Folk tradition tells us of many divination practices associated with Samhain. Among the most common were divinations dealing with marriage, weather and the coming fortunes for the year. These were performed via such methods as ducking for apples and apple peeling. Ducking for apples was a marriage divination. The first person to bite an apple would be the first to marry in the coming year. Apple peeling was a divination to see how long your life would be. The longer the unbroken apple peel, the longer your life was destined to be.14 In Scotland, people would place stones in the ashes of the hearth before retiring for the night. Anyone whose stone had been disturbed during the night was said to be destined to die during the coming year.
13.
How did these ancient Celtic practices come to America?
When the potato crop in Ireland failed, many of the Irish people, modern descendants of the Celts, emigrated to America bringing with them their folk practices which were remnants of the Celtic festival observances.
14.
We in America view this as a harvest festival. Did the Celts also view it as such?
Yes. The Celts had 3 harvests. Aug 1, or Lammas, was the first harvest, when the first fruits were offered to the Gods in thanks. The Fall Equinox was the true harvest. This was when the bulk of the crops would be brought in. Samhain was the final harvest of the year. Anything left on the vines or in the fields after this date was considered blasted by the fairies ("pu'ka") and unfit for human consumption.
15.
Does anyone today celebrate Samhain as a religious observance?
Yes. Many followers of various pagan religions, such as Druidism and Wicca, observe this day as a religious festival. They view it as a memorial day for their dead friends and family, much as the mainstream US does the national Memorial Day holiday in May. It is still a night to practice various forms of divination concerning future events. It is also considered a time to wrap up old projects, take stock of one's life and initiate new projects for the coming year. As the winter season is approaching, it is a good time to do studying on research projects, and also a good time to begin handwork such as sewing, leatherworking, woodworking etc., for Yule gifts later in the year. And while "satanists" are using this holiday as their own, this is certainly not the only example of a holiday (or even religious symbols) being "borrowed" from an older religion by a newer one.
16.
Does this involve human or animal sacrifice?
Absolutely NOT! Hollywood to the contrary, blood sacrifice is not practiced by modern followers of Wicca or Druidism. There may be some people who think they are practicing Wicca by performing blood sacrificing but this is not condoned by reputable practitioners of today's neo-Pagan religions.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Tardo, Russell K., "What's Wrong with Halloween?", Faithful Word Publishers, (Arabi, LA, undated), p. 2
2. Rev. Patrick Dinneen, "An Irish-English Dictionary", (Dublin, 1927), p. 937
3. Malcolm MacLennan, "A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language", (Aberdeen, 1979), p. 279
4. "The Encyclopedia of Religion", ed. Mircea Eliade, "Halloween" by Primiano, (New York, 1987) pp. 176-177
5. Alwyn & Brinley Rees, "Celtic Heritage", (New York, 1961), p. 90
6. W.G. Wood-Martin, "Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland", Vol. II, (Port Washington, NY, 1902), p. 5
7. Kevin Danaher, "The Year in Ireland", (Cork, 1972), p. 214
8. Katherine Briggs, "Nine Lives: Cats in Folklore", (London,1980), p.5
9. Dr. Anne Ross, "Pagan Celtic Britain", (London,1967), p. 301-302
10. Wood-Martin, op. cit., p. 249
11. Rees & Rees, op. cit., p. 90
12. Nora Chadwick, "The Celts", (Harmondsworth, 1982), p. 151
13. P.W. Joyce, "A Social History of Ancient Ireland", Vol.2, (New York, 1968), pp. 282-283
14. Madeleine Pelner Cosman, "Medieval Holidays and Festivals", (New York, 1981), p. 81
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
* Bord, Janet & Colin, "The Secret Country", (London: Paladin Books, 1978)
* Briggs, Katherine, "Nine Lives, Cats in Folklore", (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980)
* Chadwick, Nora, "The Celts", (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1982)
* Coglan, Ronan, "A Dictionary of Irish Myth and Legend", (Dublin: 1979)
* Cosman, Madeleine Pelner, "Medieval Holidays and Festivals", (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981)
* Danaher, Kevin, "The Year in Ireland", (Cork, Ireland: The Mercier Press, 1972)
* Dinneen, Rev. Patrick S., M.A., "An Irish-English Dictionary", (Dublin: The Irish Texts Society, 1927)
* Joyce, P.W., "A Social History of Ancient Ireland", (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968)
* MacCana, Proinsias, "Celtic Mythology", (London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1970)
* MacLennan, Malcolm, "A pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language", (Aberdeen: Acair and Aberdeen University Press, 1979)
* MacNeill, Maire', "The Festival of Lughnasa", (Dublin: Comhairle Bhealoideas Eireann, 1982)
* Powell, T.G.E., "The Celts", (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1980)
* Primiano, Leonard Norman, "Halloween" from "The Encyclopedia of Religion", ed. Mircea Eliade, (New York, McMillan Publiching Co., 1987)
* Rees, Alwyn and Brinley, "Celtic Heritage, Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales", (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1961)
* Ross, Dr. Anne, "Pagan Celtic Britain", (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967)
* Sharkey, John, "Celtic Mysteries", (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1975)
* Spence, Lewis, "British Fairy Origins", (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1946)
* Squire, Charles, "Celtic Myth & Legend, Poetry & Romance", (New York: Newcastle Publishing Co., Inc., 1975)
* Toulson, Shirley, "The Winter Solstice", (London: Jill Norman & Hobhouse, Ltd., 1981)
* Wood-Martin, W.G., "Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland", Vols. I & II, (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1902)
Published by CultWatch Response, Inc., PO Box 1842, Colorado Springs, CO 80901-1842. This article may be reprinted only if it is not excerpted or abridged in any way except for review purposes. Permission to republish must be requested in writing from the author at the above address. Price: $1.00 each, 10/$8.00, over 100/$0.65 ea., other quantities available. All prices are postpaid.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Actually, the cool air that you are talking helps the fogger make the fog and is taken from outside air through the fog outlet. If you place the fog outlet of the fogger totally inside of the PVC tubing leading to the chiller, it won't have cool air to function right, it will only have the warm foggy air inside the tube.
The fogger works by creating a tunnel in the cooler through the ice that the fog is forced through where it chills. The force of new fog and the momentum of the fog itself pushes it out of the chiller and onto the ground.
Just about every supermarket I've ever been to uses dry ice. Generally in the seafood section; they use it to pack seafood for shipment. Once the seafood arrives however, the store has great big freezers to put it in, so they don't need the ice anymore. In my area (Seattle, Washington) it's 98 cents/pound at the average QFC or Albertsons.
The only difficulty in getting the dry ice is that you need to be 18. They check IDs, generally speaking.
See, dry ice can also be used to make very very loud explosive devices. Take your average two-liter bottle, fill it about 20% of the way with warm water, add a few chunks of dry ice, screw the cap on. When the dry ice hits the warm water, it begins to turn into a gas. Eventually this gas buildup will cause the bottle to explode.
I wonder if dry ice is ever mentioned in the patriot act...
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
take a 20oz Dr. Pepper bottle or whatever you drink. Fill it half way with good old H2O and then stuff as much dry ice in it as you can. Notice the gobs and gobs of CO2 coming out. Screw the lid down tightly and give it a good hurl ( you don't want to be anywhere near it ). The result is a good bang.
btw, glass is a BAD idea so stick to plastic.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Can anyone tell me how these work?
For those that don't know, they are these little tacky fountains that you put on your desk, that have water running down rocks etc.
Here in Australia (at least) you can get ones that have a dry-ice effect - mist falling off the water onto your desk.
The thing is though, you don't need to refill them with dry-ice, or anything other than water. And they don't seem big enough to have a refrigeration unit.
Any ideas? Someone told me that there was a vibrating plate that cause the mist somehow...
Zilch
Fog juice is made, as everyone knows, by gathering a bunch of fog and squeezing it until you get the juice out. The trick is, of course, making sure that you don't get any smog mixed in with the fog, or else you'll get sfog juice, better known as Mountain Dew.
Here are a few links to get you on the right track:
C at alog=417
e x. html?item51.html
http://www.poshpots.com.au/product.asp?sku=141&
http://www.bonsaikingdom.com.au/smd1.htm
http://www.wetmaster.com.cn/doce/5.htm
http://www.holymtn.com/fountain/fogger.htm
http://www.indoor-water-fountains.com/store/ind
A summary of the site is that you can suck cool air into your fog machine and make the fog hug the ground.
Use an ice chest with vents cut in both ends, filled with ice (or dry ice) and place the fog machine inlet close to the outlet of the ice chest.
I don't know if you've just accidentally reversed the steps or not, but let me clarify some aspects of fog machines...
I've never seen a fog machine with an air inlet. I've seen lots of professional fog machines with fluid inputs, though, so that you could run hose through your lighting grids or props and not have to disrupt them if the machine ran out of fog juice (especially in the middle of a show!).
A fog machine works by pumping fog juice into a small heated cavity with a very small exit hole. Usually, the heating cavity is built into a cylindrical rod or pipe. As it's pumped into the confined cavity, the fog juice expands very suddenly, which increases the pressure inside the cavity and causes it to blast out the front of the machine, under great pressure. (150PSI or so, I would think; I've seen fog machines explode their heater assemblies.) Surrounding the heater assembly is generally an insulated box (which *always* gets really gross with leaked fog juice). The insulation is to prevent people from getting burned should they touch it - and to reduce the running time of the heater element inside the heater assembly.
The heater assembly is usually set back sufficiently far inside the nozzle that it's difficult to touch the heater assembly accidentally.
While the concentric shape of the fog machine's nozzle might lead you to believe that there's a system to draw air through the fog machine, I assure you that there isn't.
If you were to create a hole inside an existing fog machine and attempt to pump chilled air through it, I think it's very unlikely that you would manage to make fog which sinks to the ground. More likely, the fog machine's thermostat would detect that the heater assembly was cold, and would keep the heater on longer. The fog would remain at normal operating temperature as it left the nozzle - if not, there will be no fog. Most fog machines will not pump fog juice into their heater assemblies until the thermostat reports that the heater assembly is up to the correct running temperature.
The system works as follows:
[FOG JUICE BOTTLE] --> fog juice --> [FOG MACHINE] --> hot fog --> [CHILLER] --> cool fog --> [STAGE]
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This is a great idea and I will have to build one for myself the next time I am involved with a haunted house. I just thought I would let you know of an easier method for the lazy people out there. When faced with the problem of floating fog, I also decided on using dry ice to cool the fog, but having a million other problems to solve in my haunted house, I struck upon a very simple solution. Use a piece of PVC pipe that is of the same diameter as the fog machine's output nozzle, and place the dry ice in the PVC. Since the pipe is rather narrow, the fog passes over the dry ice, and if you place the ice along a 2-3 foot segment, it is cooled down very nicely. For best results, use crushed dry ice (larger surface area means better cooling) and check/ re-fill the pipe every hour or so. That is the easiest method, but I do like the slick package they put together with the cooler and all.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
I work in theatre and Rosco makes a nifty device called a ColdFlow. I bought one for a show a while back and it basically works like this:
You hook up a Dewar tank of liquid CO2 to this device - it makes dry ice in a tubular cavity with heatsink-like protrusions. When it is properly chilled, you can fire a professional fog machine (like the High End F100 - incredible output) through the chamber and it can cover a stage 50 feet wide and 40 feet deep with ground-hugging fog knee deep. Of course, it's $1200 and the Dewar tank costs $130 and can only be stored for so long, but you can continually chill the ColdFlow for 18 hours off a 400 pound tank. The High End F100 costs about $1000, but if you ever want to create an absolutely ridiculous amount of cold fog - that's your best bet. Talk to your local theatre technicians and ask to play with their toys - they're always happy to oblige (I know I am).
The chiller can be built very inexpensively (major cost is the sacrifice of a largish cooler)
I built one of these for my high school theater. I used a cheaper ($3 - $5) plain Styrofoam cooler. It won't hold up as long as the nice plastic/Styrofoam cooler in the article, but works just as well for the yearly Halloween party.
Anyone know the science behind these? Or why they don't use this technique in place of dry-ice for stage shows/nightclubs etc?
Also are there any dangers associated with the ultrasound they produce? Is it going to bug the hell out of my cat?
Zilch
I metamod all about ecery day and I get mod points every week.
nothing transmitted
If I heat up dry ice, can I take a shower without getting wet?
BURN 'EM!!!!!!
Wonder if she weighs more than a duck...
The fog is water vapor, not CO2. Carbon dioxide is invisible, and hangs near the floor unless it starts to fill the room due to inadequate ventilation.
... assuming you weren't breathing TOO high a CO2 concentration (a problem when using CO2 to euthanize animals -- it's hard to get right). Too much and instead of "falling asleep", you go straight into acute respiratory disress. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
If it were above the safe concentration, you'd experience grogginess, unconsciousness, and eventual death from asphyxiation.
Well
DNA just wants to be free...
Dry ice is frozen Carbon Dioxide, or CO2, which is a gas under standard temperature and pressure conditions. The atmosphere contains about .035% of this gas. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means it absorbs light at infrared wavelengths. An increase in the concentration of this gas would, some scientists believe, cause an increase in the atmosphere's average temperature. The high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere of the planet Venus is said to contribute to that planet's high average temperature.
Man, you guys are getting ripped off! It's 25USD/gallon, which is about 1/6 the price....
My late uncle Lee Adams (Disney's first electrical engineer) invented the fog machine and held the first patent. Hold a hessian bag over the spigot of a CO2 cylinder (wear gloves) and crack the valve intermittently. You'll end up with a bag full of dry ice, created by refrigeration from the rapidly expanding vapour.
Thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint - Henry IV, Act I scene II
I think this is a variation of the Leidenfrost effect that allows you to dip your fingers in LN2 for VERY short periods of time.
It is more than possible to touch dry ice without "burning" yourself. In fact, you can pick it up and toss it without any problems.
My senior year in college, the Society of Physics Students put on a school-sponsored party. (Basically, they got paid to host a non-alcoholic event...)
Among the attractions were - Liquid Nitrogen ice cream (Make IC in 5 minutes or less...)
Misc. optics crap
Model of the Mars Rover
LOTS of dry ice for various demos. People were playing air hockey with a small chunk. (The sublimation gave you air hockey w/o the air table). It also makes this neat whining sound when you cut it with warm metal.
A bunch of us also played "Hot Potato" (or more appropriately, Cold Potato) with it. No burns.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
for him then.
-- Steven Wright
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