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Revenge for the Foil Apartment?
GooseKirk asks: "Just over a year ago, my apartment was completely covered in foil. For some reason, this resulted in global media attention, and ever since, people have been asking me, "what are you doing for revenge?" A few great ideas fell through for various reasons (Ron Jeremy was booked, apparently), and sadly, I currently lack access to an orbital weapons platform, so let me pose this riddle to the great Slashdot collective: if you were going to cook enough popcorn to effectively, and let's say hypothetically, bury a small single-story building, how would you cook it and how would you deliver it, quickly and quietly, say, under cover of darkness? At the least, I think it's an interesting puzzle, and other wacky ideas are certainly welcome... just remember, people, mum's the word, OK?"
First, get your hands on a hot-air popcorn popper. Maybe several of them.
Then, modify the popcorn popper so the kernel bin gets refilled via a chute. You can drill a hole in the side of the popper and glue a sheet metal stovepipe in, for example. Then, hook the chute up to a BIG bin of popcorn kernels.
Now, mount an exit chute to the part of the popper where the popcorn collects. Set up the popper so that as popcorn is made, it naturally falls out the exit chute. You might want to create a wheeled mount for the popper, so that it's higher than the place where it's putting the popcorn. Alternately, you could mount an electrical impeller (like a mix of propeller and submarine screw) to manually push the popcorn out. You might want to rig the thing flamethrower-style, so you're holding the exit chute and throwing a stream of popcorn wherever you point it.
Open up the window into which you're going to be inserting the popcorn. Arrange the popcorn delivery device so that the exit chute points in the window, and get ready to shoot the prepared popcorn into the interior. Ensure there's a large supply of unpopped popcorn in the ammo bin.
And plug in the extension cord.
Hopefully, hilarity ensues. Remember to collect your gear and close the window!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
And it took a CRAPLOAD of popcorn to do it. We borrowed several popcorn poppers and had them running every minute we were awake for about a week leading up to the prank.
We air popped the popcorn so that it wouldn't get grease everywhere, but we still got bits of corn all over. A few years after the prank, my friend's CD player quit working. He sent it in for repair, and they sent it back to him saying the problem was that a corn kernal had become lodged in the player somewhere.
IIRC, it takes about 120 pounds of popcorn to fill the passenger compartment of a 1964 Falcon, covering a building would take a heck of a lot more.
Good luck, if you can pull it off, the expression on his face when he sees it will be priceless!
...You're talking about burying the EXTERIOR of the building, not filling the interior volume.
A bit of basic math to calculate the volume required (keep in mind I'm a poli-sci major, not a math geek):
The minimum dimensions you'll be dealing with for a "a small single-story building" would be about 60' x 60' x 15' which gives you an exterior WALL AREA of 54 000 square feet. This is NOT including the roof. Just the exterior WALLS of the building, I'll get to the roof in a second.
For the sake of simplicity, and my own poor math skills, we'll assume your friend has a FLAT roof. That's another 3 600 square feet.
You're now dealing with 57 600 square feet of exterior area to cover with popcorn. Assuming that you want to be able to provide at least 6" of popcorn on top of the whole house and assuming you will have a way to KEEP the popcorn IN PLACE (i.e. not just pile it up) you're looking at 57 600' x 0.5' for a total of 28 800 CUBIC FEET of popcorn.
If you are EXTREMELY liberal in your calculations you can assume that about two bags of microwave popcorn will create one cubic foot of the stuff. Thus, 57 600 bags of microwave popcorn. I'm not quite sure how to calculate how much bulk popcorn you'd need, so I've put it in microwave bag terms to give you a rough idea.
If you actually need to PILE the popcorn up around the walls I suspect it would be reasonable to double this number for an approximate volume requirement. 57 600 CUBIC feet, or 115 200 BAGS of of popcorn is a FUCKING LOT of popcorn...
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Now, if you were talking about FILLING his house with popcorn...
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We'll assume a basic 1-bedroom single-story residence with kitchen, bathroom, living room, dining room, hallways, NOT including closets, and NOT including garage.
The layout of the house could DRASTICALLY affect the overall volume, so these are excessively rough estimates.
Bedroom: 20' x 20'
Kitchen: 20' x 20'
Living Room: 20' x 20'
Dining Room: 20' x 20'
Bathroom: 15' x 10'
Hallways: 35' x 5'
All Ceilings at 9'
(4)3600 + 1350 + 1575 = 17 325 cubic feet inside the house. Refer to my previous calculations regarding microwave bags / volume and you'll come to about 35 650 BAGS of microwave popcorn to accomplish this.
After all this, I seriously doubt you'll be able to do this on the kind of budget that I'd imagine you're on. Perhaps going for just your friend's bedroom / car / home-office would be a more reasonable thing to try?
--Nic
The heat generated by a pile of popcorn this big (ever hear of sawdust fires? how about haybails incinerating themselves?) will be large. All it would take is his heating equipment, a hot day, or something left on and you just burned down the guys house.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
some images of something that happened to a friend of a friend. FYI, air poppers prob won't help out much as they are (obviously) much too slow. - cceddie
Assuming:
100g of popcorn fills 1/4 cubic foot
Popcorn makes a pile at 20 degrees from vertical
House is about 800 square feet
House is a rectangle
Then I get 13.5 METRIC TONS of popcorn! That amount will almost cover the house; leaving the upper corners and roof exposed.
You will have to move the popcorn unpopped, probably by one of those 18-wheelers (although I do not know if they are big enough).
You will have to pop on site. I suggest modifying a gas dryer (removing thermostat, and tilting it back so the opening faces mostly up. You may need more than one, and I hope your friend has a natural gas line to his house already.
Turn off everything in the house so no fire starts. Start popping on the roof.
Filling the house would be much easier: the 18-wheeler should be able to hold all the popcorn (unpopped), the dryer, and the blow-in insulation machine.
If you would like my spreadsheet calculator, I can mail it to you.
Good luck