Slashdot Mirror
Mom Arrested After Son Makes Dry Ice "Bombs"
formfeed writes "Police were called to a house in Omaha where a 14-year-old made some 'dry ice bombs' (dry ice in soda bottles). Since his mom knew about it, she is now facing felony charges for child endangment and possession of a destructive device. From the article: 'Assistant Douglas County Attorney Eric Wells said the boy admitted to making the bomb and that his mother knew he was doing so. The boy was set to appear Tuesday afternoon in juvenile court, accused of possessing a destructive device.'" She's lucky they didn't find the baking soda volcano in the basement.
This lets me tell one of my favorite stories (which probably isn't all that funny.)
I have a friend who is a physicist. He was hanging around with his brother, who worked at a bookstore. They were doing essentially the same thing, but with liquid nitrogen, behind the store. After one particularly loud bottle explosion, they went back into the store, only to hear a loud pounding on the door shortly thereafter.
Opening the door, they were faced with a Baltimore County police officer, who demanded an explanation. My friend started to explain: "Oh, it's OK Officer, I'm a physicist..." As if that explained everything. Which, to be honest, probably does.
I make that joke more often than you could imagine at the physicists at work.
But in all seriousness, this continues what I've been calling the "war on curiosity". Recently, I accidentally picked a flight that had a stopover (that's what I get for clicking through the website too fast.) So while I was bored and waiting on the plane, I wandered up next to the front row of seats and peered into the cockpit. I was there for a minute or so, until the flight attendant came up in a fairly huffy attitude, and told me that I couldn't congregate in the front of the plane. Which was on the ground. With the engine shut off. With the wheels chocked. And the pilot sitting in his seat.
I'm afraid anymore to walk to the end of the platform and look down the subway tunnels. I'm afraid to take pictures of bridges. I'm afraid to be just plain curious, because it's apparently abnormal and suspicous. It's getting ridiculous. And it's going to come back and bite us in the butt.
We used to have a lot of fun with these in high school. We would put them under the bleachers during high school football games. Harmless fun... Mostly...
The cops are onto them.
I reckon about 90% of all Slashdotters made/did way more dangerous things when they were younger. I certainly did and I look forward to doing them with my kids too! It's like a ritual part of childhood in my family!
Of course, this is actually part of my hometown's attempt to make it completely undesirable to live here.
I've heard that next week they will start cracking down on rubber band "guns", too...
Is popping balloons also illegal in this neighborhood?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Society needs to figure out that it can't have it both ways. You can't desire educated kids without giving them the freedom to explore, particularly so long as the damage they do is limited to their own lives and property. Alpha double plusses require a large bottle, right?
So dry ice in a plastic soda bottle constitutes a "bomb" these days? I mean, I suppose you could "put an eye out" with it, but it's not really what I would call a "bomb". Are the police just stupid, or is the prosecuting attorney delving into hyperbole?
Proverbs 21:19
The kid was probably plotting to wire a case of mentos and coca-cola to drench his neighborhood in sudsy death...
Be thankful they weren't taking photographs too, or they'd be looking at 25 in PMITA.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It does pack a wallop!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
If you want to see more of the crude and actual childhood secrets that many of us did, you should see the Fark comments of the original post (yesterday):
There are lots of activities you can do with your teenage son, but helping him make bombs out of dry ice shouldn't be one of them. (omaha.com)
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=5457524&cpp=1
If over pressurizing a container until it explodes is a felony, make sure your kids don't:
1) Blow up a finished juice box and stomp on it.
2) Blow up a plastic bag and hit it.
3) Blow up and pop a balloon.
4) Pop bubble packaging wrap.
5) Blowing and popping bubble gum.
Those are all variations on the same theme. Now I get it, dry ice "bombs" can cause injury if used without a tiny bit of common sense. But then again, a staircase can be deadly if used incorrectly. But yes, I see the "safety" factor, but a felony? Are we serious?
Maybe if you had blown some shit up as a child you'd be a better troll today.
That's the weak point of this particular law. It's one of those "vague, let the officers interpret it" laws, so in reality, the law isn't determining if what you are doing is illegal, the officers are, and that's not how the legal system is supposed to work.
If they wanted to drag this out, I'm sure their lawyer could mount their main attack on "destructive device" and pull a win, because it would be trivial to show that the term could apply to a wide variety of things that no reasonable person would consider unlawful. Once you show a law can be used to convict even one innocent person, the law becomes unenforceable in court.
They probably will simply get the charges dropped, because the cops usually like having vague laws like that on the books because it allows them to make more flexible judgement calls. (which can be good OR bad for the public, and that's the problem) They won't want this to go to court because they'll lose their bad (but useful) law if it does. Or at least get a precedent set against it on the books.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
1. Flour dust in a closed container ...
2. Acetylene and Oxygen balloon
3. Acetylene and Oxygen trash bag
Add your own to the list
Wow - it's a good thing he wasn't caught releasing internally produced methane and igniting it. Mom could have been charged with feeding him beans.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
"Enemy of freedom and democracy". Citizens could arrest legislators, judges, heads of state, and law enforcement persons for violating the principles of a free and libertarian democracy.
The charges would be adjudicated by all citizens of the town, state, or country (whichever scope was more appropriate). If a majority of those voting agreed to convict, then the person in question would be banished or, if he so chose, could cut down a tree with a herring.
when i was younger my brother and i used to half fill 2 letre coke bottles and presurize to 9 psi and shoot them into the air, 20 years ago all the cops could do is tells us not to point them at peoples houses. the laws on the books are to broad. sure curiosity kills cats, but it puts kids and thire parents in to legal situations totaly unnesscary. at least the kid was supervised by an adult!
only outlaws will have Mentos.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Lets hope the Omaha PD doesn't find out about any high school science fairs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now, I recognize I do not know the whole story - but this kind of pisses me off, to be honest. It looks to me, like this was either an experiment or just plain fun. I recognize that the cops would be called for such a loud noise, but an arrest is ridiculous; and, it seems most people here agree. Should we do something about it, or just mock it?
Contact Juvenile Division
Contact Criminal Division
Comprehensive solutions via a competition of ideas like no other.
... back when i was younger, except they used rubbing alcohol and chlorine. It was fun to watch, and it wasn't dangerous if you stood back and detonated them in a field. Basically there is a delayed reaction between the rubbing alcohol and the chlorine which gave about 10 seconds before changing to a deep yellow color and rapidly producing chlorine gas that exploded a soda bottle. This led to more experimentation that resulted in their creation of a PVC mortar-like cannon used to launch softballs about 70 yards. Talk about cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4KMk6T5mQU
(Note the video poster makes a Freudian decontextualization of the scene in his comments. Dude, sometime as cigar is just a cigar.)
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I used to do stuff like this all the time when I was a kid. We (it was a conspiracy) used to burn stuff (nothing that was alive) and see if we could get things to explode. Carbide was a lot of fun. Also, amazing what you can do with even small amounts of gasoline and other flammable solvents. This was all good fun. It is a normal part of growing up. We never had the cops visit (we were smart enough or lucky enough to avoid alarming the neighbors.)
felony "possession of a destructive device"? I have all sorts of destructive devices in my house. A sledge hammer, a chainsaw, kitchen knifes, box cutters, crowbar, hedge clippers, scissors, etc... am I going to be in some sort of trouble?
IIRC, "possession of a destructive device" is legalese for "in posession of fireworks or their ilk". Not legal within city limits
I think Bill Nye should redo his entire show episodes filmed from a cave with a couple of bodyguards and AK-47's behind him.
C'mon people - when did we forget what it was like to be a boy? It's how we learn. Are taping several bottle rockets together to make it multi-stage and seeing what lights on fire with a magnifying glass going to be terrorist activities too? Do we need a 3-day waiting period for building a potato gun?
It's amazing what a little bit of fear and fear-mongering (I'm talking to you the Fox News) will do to the way people interact with the world.
We did something similar in our teen years while working at a recreation center with a soccer ball.
Having found a spare soccer ball and with one of those desktop mounted air pumps we would put an increasing amount of pressure into the soccer ball and then the guys would bounce the thing around the gym. This went in stages, a little more pressure, the guys would go back to kicking the ball around the building, then back for more air pressure...
After seven or eight of these cycles of increasing pressure in the soccer ball it took on a distinct metallic sound when bouncing. The soccer ball had about 115 PSI in it and the guys decided to kick it around the hallway that connected several of the rooms in the recreation center. I was watching the fun and one of the guys kicked the ball and it hit the edge of a table and was bouncing up and down on top of the table. From 25 feet away I could hear brittle cracking sounds coming from the ball... At the last instant I have the picture of one of the guys running away from the ball with a look of fear on his face. Right at that moment the ball exploded like a bomb.
The sound of the explosion just left my ears with a buzzy, ringing sound as the guys are laughing their asses off. Quickly they grabbed all of the soccer ball shrapnel and hid it right as the senior citizens group was pouring out of their meeting room. There were retirees who must have served in WW II who were looking for the 250 pound bomb crater or airplane crash, asking furious questions about where the bomb went off.
To their credit, the guys just looked quizzically at the senior citizens and said "what noise?".
Doing a post mortem on the soccer ball one of the sewn panels failed and ejected the air bladder from the ball. The soccer ball skin was turned inside out. There were tiny little shards of rubber ball liner everywhere.
Kids do stupid stuff. Outlaw CO2 (since it is a greenhouse gas and eeevil too). Adults will not stop the never-ending quest by kids for things that go BOOM!
Tisha Hayes
any proponent of libertarianism who wishes to whittle away government regulations until the power vacuum is filled by corporations, who are not interested in our freedom or democracy at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is nothing. Back in the day I lived in a state that allowed fireworks. Typically around New Years my friends and I would get some empty wrapping paper rolls, some bottle rockets and pretend like we had bazookas. Light a bottle rocket it, stick it in one end, watch it come out the other and go wherever you pointed it. I'm sure that was breaking some kind of law, but it sure was fun. Of course we were smart enough to go out into the woods where no annoying parents or busy bodies were around to see.
Ah yes - what we used to call the 'Tonic Bomb'. My first encounter with it was quite by accident - I used to make orange soda by putting a few cc of dry ice into a 2 liter bottle of OJ. I was eight years old, and fortunately my dad had the foresight to tell me, "You'd better do that outside." BOOM!!! with a CO2 vapor cloud that took a while to dissipate on that hot humid midwest summer evening.
Harmless? Hardly. It was a gateway bomb. A few years later (8th grade chemistry) I figured out that the oxy-acetylene tanks in our garage had a use far greater than fueling a cutting torch. Punching bag balloons with a real punch. Got in trouble for those. Probably because I set them off behind the police station.
Fortunately this happened in the 1980's, so I was not labelled a terrorist, and merely had to go to juvi court and promise to not do it again. And I didn't. Until I was an undergrad with unlimited access to whatever raw materials I wanted.
Bombs made as an undergrad, and since, have been bigger and better. But most importantly, safer. Today the thought of five cubic feet of primary explosive (72% O2 + 28% C2H2) in a balloon frightens me.
Some people are going to want to blow shit up. Many of these people will actually attempt it. Teach them how to do it safely.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
as a ward of the state. This is classified as idle, and it's easy to laugh at the absurdity of it. But seriously, the parent is facing child endangerment charges, as well as posession of a destructive device. That means likely serious jail time, and even more likely that the child will be taken into foster care, and almost certainly be treated very badly. Furthermore, he will grow up having had his life ruined by the law. Something relatively harmless becomes a series of good reasons to actually deploy destructive devices or turn to crime.
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
Wow, is this what we're coming to? When I was a kid (34 now) I did all kinds of stuff that would now get someone in my family put in jail. It's not like I never got caught, it's just that people understood what 'boys will be boys' meant back then. Sure I didn't personally make a bomb (I would have) but you could have locked me up many times over for incendiary devices, or as I got older, reckless driving.
It's sad that it's come to this. How many of the worlds smartest people did dangerous things when they were kids? How many electrical engineers played with electricity? How many fire fighters played with fires? How many SWAT team members shot guns and made bombs? How many architects, civil engieers or constructions workers built forts out of wood the re-appropriated from their neighbors fences? How many lemon-aid stand kids are now rich capitalists?
Our government now only promotes mediocrity, not excellence.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I guess once police proclaim something a 'destructive device" all rights can be removed from anyone who happens to standing around. The law doesn't seem to be too specific as to how destructive something is, or what it could destroy. I have a devices which destroy wood. You know, saws, gouges, routers, drills, sanders. Think of the damage you could do with those. Much more than dry ice in a plastic bottle.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
kid farts, parents detained for manufacturing biological WMD
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Contrary to the humorous jokes about popping balloons, mentos and coke, etc- these do have significant explosive force. When they're at full pressure they can maim. While the first google search of "dry ice bomb accident" turns up a youtube video of a small bottle, one can also see videos from Mythbusters where they used 2 liter containers.
Very quickly you can see that putting one of these inside of a mailbox can do serious damage.
These are no different than the drain bombs of my 'youth' when kids were stuffing them in mailboxes everywhere. Those did cause serious injuries- given the reaction of the lye and the shrapnel from the explosions.
Should Mom be charged? No, she shouldn't, and there should be some common sense applied. But since a 14 year old can't exactly buy dry ice (at least not at the places I fill my CO2 tanks at) then she was supplying him- and if she wasn't supervising him doing this... there is a degree of recklessness that needs to be addressed.
Maybe she doesn't understand how dangerous these things can be? I doubt the kid was wearing a face shield with gloves and an apron to protect himself incase of premature detonation.
As a society we all would pay if this child was injured. That's the overriding concern- and society would be screaming right now if the police had showed up, said "Oh, OK, keep at it" and left... and then the kid was in an accident and cost (lets say an eye) his sight.
You can't have it both ways.
The Police should jail themeselves. Everywhere!
They ... detonated... a container full of dry ice? What's next, nuke Mars?
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I recall getting hassled by the local cops when my cousins and I decided to ignite a strip of magnesium in an empty parking lot. You'd think we were loading sticks of dynamite in a van by the way the officer initially reacted. That was about 20 years ago. I'd probably be looking at charges if it were done today.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
maybe he did and got hit in the head a few times by shrapnel and as a result can't spell good anymore
Criminal Division
1701 Farnam Street
Hall of Justice, Suite # 100
Omaha, NE 68183
(402) 444-7040
In situations like this, public outcry and shame against those who infringe on freedom is a useful tool. Shame is underutilized as a form of social change. We should change that and complain to anyone connected with this charge. Loudly. So rather than posting here impotently, Call the Douglas County Attorney's office and state that this charge is an assault freedom
Here are just a few things I did with my Dad some 30 years ago, that might get both of us arrested today!
1) Tennis ball cannon - used lighter fluid and the cans tennis balls came in along with some duct tape and a lighter - oh my!
2) Collect hydrogen via electrolysis of water - filled garbage bag - set on fire to see it go whoosh!
3) Potato gun - enough said with that one
4) Learned to safely use a firearm and rabbit hunting (love rabbit stew) on public land
5) Estes Rockets!
6) and many experiments with chemistry sets that would NEVER be sold in this day and age!
I feel so sorry for kids these days
Remember the episode of the Brady Bunch where Peter made the volcano? And he bragged about lava oozing all over the place?
He could have killed us all!
Didn't you guys get this?
MEMO:
Dear Mrs/Ms/Mister Curious Person,
Education is not for satisfaction of your personal curiosity, but merely to recite what's written on the textbooks authored by the knowledgeable authorities.
Yours truly, The knowledgeable authorities.
Oh, and think of the children too.
Man... I guess I there's a good point to having grown up in the 80's. I used to make pressure bombs with Drano and aluminum foil in Shwepps Club Soda bottles, drop chlorine tablets into mason jars of brake fluid, this dry ice stunt, nitric acid and sulphur mixes... played with a lot of black poweder and model rocket engines.... it all fueled my love of chemistry at a young age and I never had the cops appear. Have you seen the constituents of today's chemistry sets???? Pathetic. Is model rocketry with solid propellent engines still allowed as a hobby anymore? I was shocked to go to a Wal-Mart recently and discover they didn't sell Testor model paints!
Trying to disarm the populace and turn us into a nation of impotent pussies. Haven't they ever watched the documentary Red Dawn? The laugh it that they'll be first against the wall when the TerroCommies come for us.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The right to bear arms should include the right to bear gas powered spinning steel blades !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Someone built me a potato cannon. I took it to work to show off. Yeah, I work somewhere I could take it and it would be appreciated. Anyway, an hour after I get to work, Secret Service arrives outside. Swat parks their van out front. Cops are everywhere. Yes, I took it to work the day George Bush was scheduled to check into the hotel 100 ft away. Needless to say, I decided not to demo the cannon.
First they came for the chemistry sets, and I did not speak up, because I was not a chemist.
Then they came for the dry ice...
"Eagles may soar, but weasels dont get sucked into jet engines."
therefore, your task is to remove that corruption from government
yet libertarian philosophy seems to seek to remove government itself, or whittle it down to ineffectiveness
then what can stand between us and dominance by corporations?
the idea is to repair the corporate infection of government, restore government as a bulwark against corporations, rather than what government has become: their tool
yet libertarianism seems to desire to destroy government, thereby removing the only thing that can possibly protect us from corporate power
let's put it this way: make a list of every abuse of government you despise. ok, when you whittle down government, every one of those abuses will still be committed, except by corporations, whom you have no recourse or control over, and then a whole new set of abuses will be visited on you, by entities completely unaccountable to you. that's reality
libertarians seem to me to be very naive. i don't think they want the world to be a corporatocracy, they just don't understand that that that is what the real world effect of their naive belief system is
you NEED a strong central government, or the power vacuum will be filled by corporations. its as simple as that, that's reality. try to square that with your ideological naivete, and evolve out of this juvenile, simplistic wish fulfillment that is libertarianism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
These can actually be more dangerous when they don't go off as planned. There have been at least two little children in my county serious hurt because someone threw one of these into someone else's yard and drove off (probably as a prank). But there didn't go off. The next day (or days) as soon as the child touched then they exploded lacerating their faces.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
It wasn't that long ago that the cops shut down Boston over a Lite Brite.
Let's see. When I was a kid (pre-teen), I made big booms by taking the powder from many small firecrackers and packing it into toilet paper tubes. They were great for ant hill demolition! Then when I was a teen I made bigger booms by making thermite and nitrogen tri-iodide bombs. The only kid I knew from then (in the 60's) that got arrested for making explosives (we were in AP chemistry together) was making nitroglycerin, and that was because he blew a big hole in the school parking lot. And they're arresting a kid and his mom for making dry ice bombs? It's a good thing we were living in a bit more permissive (and forgiving) society back then...
Is this why my interns were trying to make dry ice bombs this morning!? The stupidity of people never stops amazing me; the interns were holding a capped tube with dryice and water front of their face with no safety glasses on giggling.
Our nation is in a fit of ignorance and this type of arrest is a great proof that only college graduates from highly accredited universities should be allowed to serve as police officers.
It is simply beyond all sanity that our society should be so squirreled up over explosives. Yes we did have a 9/11. And that has nothing to do with a kid with a firecracker or a plastic bottle filled with dry ice. Nor does it have anything to do with fireworks or a farmer blowing a stump out of his field. These ignorant cops and law makers might as well arrest themselves. After all, a car makes an explosion every time the piston is pushed down the cylinder. And teens and kids setting off explosives was an enjoyable and educational part of American life for centuries.
Freedom is taking a break in America. It may not return.
What's next? Felony for placing unopened cans of soda in the freezer? Removal of chemistry and physics from schools?... 'cuz anyone that knows anything about how electricity, magnetism and/or chemistry is clearly a threat to society. No dry ice bombs, but fireworks are legal! Me thinks "dangerous" entertainment is only allowed if there is a multi-billion dollar industry to back it.
A hammer is a destructive device too.
Its disheartening when I see our legal system doing more actual damage to peoples lives than the origional "crime" could ever have reasonably hoped to accomplish. All the while there is no shortage of real criminals operating unimpeded.
is in fact the National Bottle Association. And they run the country, so the cop is probably going to jail along with the state senators and governor for impinging on the kid's right to bare arms.
Nullius in verba
Now there would have been no problem (in principle) with the boy making loud bangs - with a .357 magnum, since these are constitutionally protected. Take away the dry ice and give him a box of hollow points lady!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I blame the school system. This one in particular is not following the federal standard of keeping kids ignorant and passing them along from grade to grade with absolutely no ability to think for themselves. Kids with minds of their own! What is this country coming to? Someday our kids may start performing as well as other kids around the world - what an ugly world that would be. No, it's best to keep to the standard - jail parents and teachers for promoting curiosity and independence - it's the only way!
There is this mass group-think happening here were 99% of the posters say something about how it is just harmless fun.
Well, it isn't. People get badly hurt by them. Esophageal injury from a plastic bottle containing dry ice. One of the children in this case nearly died. If you do a Google search for 'dry ice injury' or 'dry ice accident' you can find plenty. Such as this one from Dry Ice Experiments Feedback:
Lots of accidents on video at YouTube.
Yeah. All good harmless fun.
Not.
A childhood friend of mine lived at the end of a culdasac at the top of a hill with a manhole cover in the center. We must have been about 14 and had been lighting fireworks off for several years.
We just discovered how awesome "Artillery Shells" are when you light them off but don't put them in the tube. One of us decided that we had to know what they sounded like when they exploded while in the manhole. So we proceeded to throw about 6-10 of them down there and they did sound really cool.
My friends mom came home. Thank [deity of choice] that we ran out of artillery shells and had put the manhole cover back. We were just throwing bottle rockets and black cats down the little pry hole at this point. She exploded, no pun intended, on us and had a police officer come over and tell us: "If even the smallest spark got down there you would ignite the explosive sewer gas and blow the whole block up!" We tried not to laugh and rolled our eyes.
Kids do stupid stuff
It can't be summed up any better than that.
There is no other way to get rid of it safely... Maybe if people actually found out what the article is talking about first, they wouldn't make asses of themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_ice_bomb How else would you disarm it? That's part of the problem with a dry ice bomb. They can an do cause property and personal damage. This isn't a baking soda volcano.
then what can stand between us and dominance by corporations?
Us... There is only us.. and we are the ones who give corporations their power.
”We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.... The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone."
– Orison Swett Marden
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
... as evidenced by this trash can being completely torn apart while someone's sitting on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuYuXfRJmYM
Well put.
...
through our tool, our democratically elected government
duh
as for us giving corporations their power, if a corporation does something you don't like, what do you do? how do exert influence over them? you write a nasty blog?
no, your government REGULATES them
what is the substance of your post exactly? wish fulfillment?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
seems like an overreaction to me. has our society really gone from giving 14 year olds cherry bombs and m80's with no problem to charging them and their parent for overpressurizing a plastic bottle. i thought we lived in a free society. as long as he's not blowing up other peoples things and causing noise complaints it shouldn't be a problem. is it just because it can be potentially dangerous to himself? If we're using that reasoning, shouldn't we start arresting kids for climbing trees? then arrest them for making a camp fire in boy scouts? these are all potentially dangerous things but someone needs to draw the line. we can't start regulating peoples lives just for the reason that they could potentially hurt themselves. if someone wants to do something dangerous, ( cus dry ice bombs are SOOOOO dangerous) its their choice to make as long as its not putting other people in danger. Now, i have to go so i can shut off the power to my house before i get arrested for playing with electricity.
Boy gets arrested for bringing a lego gun to school.
No kidding! And if you think a 6 foot cardboard tube with a few ounces of fuel in it is a public safety hazard what about LAWNMOWERS. Some of those things have 52 inches of spinning metal blades and are self-propelled. They're supposed to have "dead-man" switches on them, but those are annoying, easily disabled, and seldom work quickly anyhow. Think of all the horrifying disasters that might happen if people are allowed to continue using lawnmowers the same way they have been doing for decades! I think we can clearly make the case that lawnmowers should only be approved for use by trained professionals in closed, non-residential areas.
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
I was just mentioning this the other day to a couple people that I was considering doing this on the 4th of July as a way to get around the 'anti-fireworks' laws. Since fireworks are considered "explosives" and banned in our communist state of Kalifornia, then maybe we'll make some dry ice bomb, since those are damn loud and the police couldn't do anything about it, except maybe give me a ticket for loud noise, which is no big deal. Now I read that someone got charged with a FELONY??!!!?? WHAT??!!
This charge is complete BS! I'm almost MORE tempted to try it now on the 4th of July. This is not a bomb as it DOES NOT HAVE IGNITION happening during the 'explosion'. It's only a build up and release of CO2, so it is the same priciple of over filling a balloon or tire or innertube or anything else too much until it pops. Dry Ice is nothing more than CO2, so it's not a 'substance used for building a bomb' or anything like that. In fact, it's the same damn gas you would be blowing out of your lungs into a balloon.
Potatoe guns are only illegal if you have the kind that use an 'accellerant' and actual ignition to launch the projectile. It's perfectly legal to build and use a potatoe gun that uses compressed air. With that said, a BOTTLE WITH COMPRESSED AIR IS NOT A BOMB or exposive device.
The problem seems to be the law itself, namely outlawing possession of destructive devices.
Practically anything can be interpreted to be a destructive device from a common lighter to a nuclear bomb. Hundreds of our laws are like this, being able to be twisted through interpretation to outlaw anything an authority feels like outlawing at a given moment. In practice this results in a state where anything could be illegal, especially anything that doesn't fit in or is different in any way, and encourages blind and unthinking submission to authority.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
because you're not really a libertarian
you're saying the same thing i am saying. so cheers to you, my friend
let us beat back this dangerous libertarian horde of nitwits out to destroy the only tool we have against corporate power, and let us purge our government of the disease of corporate influence
it won't be easy, but its the only way
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Most of the comments reflect an astounding lack of understanding of the current state of the legal system in the US. You would think that people would finally have gotten it through their heads what the state of things are now, but apparently not.
OK, so you have a kid making a semi-explosive device. That has a tendency to throw shrapnel around. Like fireworks, it makes a noise and is perfectly safe as long as everyone is a safe distance away. I want to stress everyone and safe distance. Unlike earlier in the 20th Century, it is today pretty difficult to find wide-open spaces without people. You can think you are out in the uninhabited desert and come across a bunch of people on ATVs. You can be in the woods and run into hikers. There just aren't a lot of places where there is nobody around anymore.
Now suppose that everyone has been responsible and made sure that before such a device goes off that everyone is a safe distance away. Now some fool comes stumbling into the area and is injured. Guess what? They are going to sue someone. Actually, they are going to sue everyone they can think of that might have deep pockets. This will include the local police for not preventing such activities. It can include the school if information about such a device was passed around between students at the school. In short, today when someone is injured - especially a child - there is a huge incentive to sue because (amazingly) lawsuits work. You take a chance at winning the lottery and the family is set for life. Sadly the kid with only one eye lost something irreplacable, but everyone else is happy.
The money awarded to the family isn't coming out of some magic box just for lottery ... er, lawsuit ... winners. It comes out of state and local governments, school systems and companies. This doesn't "teach anyone a lesson" nor does it do anything to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. What it does is cause financial havoc and that is about all. So of course the local police get the message real quick - better not let a lawsuit like this get started here.
End result is obvious: the police are going to do everything in their power to minimize lawsuits affecting the state and local government and all associated organizations, like the school system. They will do this in an utterly ruthless manner because their very survival depends on being successful. Hence you have rather strong enforcement when someone does something that could, in someone's wild imagining, present grounds for a lawsuit.
As it turns out, the replacement reaction between the Al3+ ions and the Na2+ ions is very exothermic, which causes the expansion of the water in the bottle, popping it.
Ah, AP Chemistry...
I remember being younger and building a few dry ice bombs, sparkler bombs, potato guns and what have you. Hell I might even have blown up a frog or two with M-80s. I believe this what we used to refer to as "fun", but I should probably look that up on wikipedia to be sure I wasn't really a terrorist.
On the upside this article does make me want to have some kid's so I can be arrested when they scream to loud playing in the yard or get sued when they stick gum in someone's hair at school. Maybe I'll just lock them in a closet to be safe, I wouldn't want them to have any fun and make national news.
Also, The Works toilet cleaner + aluminum foil in a bottle. Just a few of the fun things we learned when signed up for the Science elective
Please, please post a follow up. Will it go to court? does it get laughed out of court?
That will be the interesting story.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Harmless? What about the possiblilty of causing panic in the crowd and in thier panic there are injuries?
If a cop asks you to delete a picture you should politely refuse to comply. If the cop is insistent you should suggest he consult his supervisor and then refuse to cooperate further except where non-cooperation could appear as threatening. For example, if the cop says "ON THE GROUND MOTHERFUCKER!" you should quickly get on the ground. If you are physically assaulted, state loudly and as clearly as possible that you are not resisting and request that they stop hurting you.
Also, it is very important to note any surveillance cameras which may be in the vicinity and to request that any witnesses record what is happening.
Above all, remain as calm as possible and never forget that standing up to tyranny is the greatest duty of every American.
...but I find that I cannot express my opinion of Mr. Wells without resorting to obscenity.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I took a picture of a line and poster one the wall in Wells Fargo. There was a huge line and ONE teller and the poster had a happy customer with a slogan like: "we like to be quick about your business". Right way an asst manager who was not helping anyone roared out "hey, you can't take pictures in here, Delete it right now!" I was of course emailing it to myself at that moment. "Sorry to late" Oh and she got mad. She said "I could call the police on you, you can't take photo's in here" "Really there is no sign, and why can't I?, I have been coming in this branch for 6 years, I have both personal and business accounts. I could walk though here blind folded. Go ahead ask me how many stanchions are behind me, and how many feet from the last one to the door". I did not move out of line, she ran off and got the bank manager who could see she was just being pissee asked me half heartedly if he could please see what I took a photo of. I show him and he shipishly asked that I refrain from taking photos in the bank. The cow that started it sniply called out "I ask before I take photos somewhere" I responded "I do not". And I went about my banking business. She does not work there any more.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
A mother has been charged with a felony because her child was making dry ice bombs in soda pop bottles.
I applaud and support mother and child against somebody's attempt to jump-start a law enforcement career in anti-terrorism..
After I learned about getting water to conduct electricity by adding salt, and that with the conduction of electricity you could get electrolysis, and electrolysis turns H20 water molecules back into the original H2 hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, I got the gases. First I got them separately and verified there was always about twice as much hydrogen at the negative electrode as oxygen at the positive, so the formula for water, H2O, checked out. I couldn't get enough hydrogen to make a Hindenberg-type balloon (much lighter than helium, too bad). Now I know how to build the power supplies so I wouldn't use up batteries. Bring on the grandchildren! Failing a balloon, I next released both the H2 and the O2 into a single Coke bottle (I used upside-down Coke bottles filled with water to collect the bubbles). Of course, the proportions were perfect to make water, because they came from water -- the perfect mixture for an explosion. I lit the gas and got a neat, almost musical "Pop!!" from the Coke bottle. I was about 12. My childhood had its happy times, and somehow I survived it..
The ensuing research career was not successful, in that I never got academic tenure, but it brought me to great people at wonderful institutions around the world, and I enjoyed it with all the same enthusiasm and hunger to see for myself how things really worked, something now stifled by criminalization in the reported family. --jerry-VA
Many are destined 2reason wrongly; others, not 2reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason. Voltaire
Probably makes my (and friends) younger days as cavers (spelunkers to those of you across the pond) very iffish. We used calcium carbide (generating acetylene) helmet lamps (believe me, low tech is *good* when you are thrutching and bouncing through tight limestone passages, immersed in cold fast flowing streams and squeezing through and generally covered in mud). Given the authorities' predilections today, I am not going to give details, other than to say the obvious, making carbide bombs is not difficult.
Go off with a bit more of a bang though - one of my caving friends made one to show off; blew the friend he was showing off to across the small backyard and shattered every window in the back of the house (luckily the experience was just expensive, nobody was injured). He thought that he could get away with not telling the rest of us in the caving club; however given that the friend blown across the yard was a member of the climbing club, and that I had friends in said club, we had a fair degree of amusement catching the miscreant by surprise and quizzing him in the pub about it......
Disclaimer - don't try it, they are actually quite dangerous, and will likely get you into trouble.
Dry ice in a plastic bottle with water is NOT a "destructive device." It's a fucking science experiment.....
This is utterly ridiculous. Yes, it makes a loud noise - so do all of the other methods of popping a plastics bottle.
Now, if he were putting these on unsuspecting people's doosteps, that would be problematic....
To prove my point I am making some now..RIght now, at 2:19pm, in downtown Philly....Now all of you who have read this are aware, and though I am not a minor, your silence (or comments) obviously indicate tacit approval...If you disapprove, that can be conveyed by doing something other than commenting or not commenting....
While I do see the issue with making these things, particularly if care isn't taken when placing them, but they are not bombs...Like anything else involving science (or REALITY), carelessness can lead to injury, but this is NOT something his mother should be charged with a FELONY for.......I would urge everyone to contact the department that some thoughtful individual listed above in the thread.
If you enjoyed the dry ice overpressurizing a bottle until it pops, you'll LOVE this:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/307550/how_to_make_a_works_bomb/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A projectile propelled by the force of explosive powder is considered a gun. Everything else is not ;)
You mean like unscrewing the top of the container off?
While it’s under pressure and liable to pop at the slightest disturbance? Let me guess... you also check roman candles that fail to ignite by visually inspecting the inside of the tube?
The other guy on here was correct: You pop it with a BB gun from a safe distance.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
We took a supersoaker intake hose, fitted it to a bottle of standard butane held on w/ a washer and DuctTape.
The supersoaker valve was never intended to hold back that kind of preassure so we in essence created a "pilot light." OMG when we pulled the trigger it looked like the movies!
Cost: $50 USD. Fear Factor? 100% I've never seen a flame that big since (not counting t.v.)
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Most of corporation's power comes from government, not despite it.
Threshold too high..
You have the option of dealing with which corporations you wish to do business with. The government is not optional, it is at best slightly changeable.
If a corporation violates your rights*, that is a good place for the government to step in. For example, if corporation destroys your property, they are just as liable as an individual that does the same.
*no, not violate your sense of moral outrage
Correction: The globalists found oil in Omaha and now distribute made up stories in the "liberal media" about weapons of mass destruction there, to get approval to start a war... also they meet in bilderberg to plan (nearly) complete extinction of mankind
well yes, I am Alex Jones. How'd you know?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The ATF definition of a destructive device includes the following caveat: The term "destructive device'' shall not include any device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon
i used to set these off all the time as a kid. theirs not a dammed thing destructive abought them. they just make a loud sound. just tosses some water and dry ice around a bit. and if you live by a lake that make cool dept charges hehe catch some fish easy with explosions. i hope this bs charge gets drooped when they go to court. even if it blew up the kids face it wouldn't hurt him. nothing pisses me off more when i see these story's kids experimenting with siance and you get bs charges by cops. like i said cops can trump up all the stupid charges they like i just hope there judge is down to earth and tosses the case before it goes anywhere.
What I find so stupid about this is the cops said they found an ice bomb and detonated it. Translation; So the cops built a dry-ice bomb themselves and set them off.
I suppose these guys haven't checked out Google Streetview yet. That has just about everything photographed you can possibly think of, and I'm sure there are a bunch of Amtrak trains in their pictures. Wonder who's going to get harassed over those? No wait, everyone who looks at the pictures might get into trouble... Shit, shouldn't be giving them any ideas here... Luckily, living at the bottom tip of Africa, you can take photos of anything. You may even take photos of the president and his cavalcade. Your just not allowed to take photographs of said while flipping them off. It's ok to photograph them, or to flip them of, but not both at once because that's seen as a threat. I kid you not...
Two stories: First one: Friends of mine worked in the theatre game and would often have left over dry ice from shows. After one show closed they were setting off dry-ice bombs at a party. Apparently one went off just as a taxi drove past, and the driver feared for his safety so called the cops. A policeman turned up, wanted an explanation, and a demo was arranged. It took some time for the bottle to go off, and when it did the cop was quite alarmed. His response: don't do them after 10pm.
Second one: same friend's father works for the forensic science people. A person was charged with blowing things up with CO2 bombs and they were trying to replicate the device. The suspect claimed to get them to go off after 15min, but the scientists were not getting them to go within 45min. Son said to Dad: you need to add water to the dry ice. Difficult silence followed.
When burying bottle bombs, make sure it isn't next to the rooster that was dispatched a week earlier. GF and her father (now wife and father in law) found that was a bit yucky.
Search on YouTube for 'Frozen Explosions' for some fun with CO2 bombs, including in a swimming pool and launching drum lids
You do not need "range" capability or rocket fuel to hurt people:
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20080516011
"Crimes Amendment (Rock Throwing) Bill 2008
But rock throwing, which causes great harm to people—Nicole Miller, for example, suffered brain damage when a man threw rocks from a bridge at the car in which she was a passenger—gets no mention at all. - throw a rock from a height at a vehicle it could kill someone—in fact, it could kill many people if it causes a crash in which a bus is overturned -"
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
I am concerned for what we are becoming. The US is leading the way, but it is certainly not an exclusively American phenomenon. While our educational system teaches to the lowest common denominator, the public is lulled to sleep by the mediocrity of their existence. Where someone rises above the median, they are punished and ostracised by societies leaders and their hired thugs who change the popular opinions and even meanings of words to suit their interests. This has happened before, but we call those the dark ages. I guess we should be glad they aren't burning people at the stake yet.
Perhaps it is time to hide what we truly are and experiment in secret. Given that these events are cyclical in nature, we can simply sandbag our findings until the public is once again interested in taking steps forward. This too has been done before, though the media has sensationalized the history. The world's best and brightest working in secret with a society bent on ignorance at all costs, including the life and liberty of those great minds. Perhaps it is time to build an intellectual subculture, after all, most of it is already there.
As a science-oriented kid back in the 1970's living in rural America, we used to do all kinds of stuff that, today, would no doubt land us in jail in a heartbeat.
We used to make homemade gun powder, pack it into pill bottles, and blow 'em up in various configurations. We'd pack it tighter or looser and vary the ingredients causing the explosions to go from a loud "bang" to a cool mushroom smoke cloud. And of course, adding some magnesium made for a bright show.
And we'd take chunks of sodium (weren't science classes fun back in the day?!?) and drop it in swimming pools or lakes and watch the fun.
I doubt kids today even know what are the components of gun powder. Not necessarily because they don't know the chemistry, but it's just not Politically Correct to even think about gun powder anymore.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
That's why I never told my mom until after the explosions, when I was asking her to call the fire department...
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The mom should be charged. Who lets their 14 year old play with bombs. This dry ice website talks about how dangerous those things can be. If you know your kids is going to do it and you let them and they get in trouble... you deserve to be punished.