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A Firecracker-Launching Slingshot: Start the New Year With a Bang
An anonymous reader writes "Joerg Sprave is at it again. This time, in order to bring in the New Year, he's got something with a bit more bang to it: a firecracker-launching slingshot. Being German, Joerg has built a slingshot that will accommodate the largest legal firecracker in that country. '2 grams of black powder in a tight cardboard "cigar" make a pretty loud bang! In order to make these bangs more spectacular, it is desirable to shoot them as high into the air as possible. A special slingshot crossbow has been designed, chambered for the strongest legal firecrackers. The weapon is a breech loader, and an integrated storm lighter allows the shooter to light the fuse when the weapon is all ready for the shot. The weapon launches the firecracker with tremendous force. The blunt object easily crashes through a moving card board box, and — equipped with a wooden tip — even goes in all the way into a block of ballistic gelatin.' His two videos are available on YouTube: part 1, part 2."
This is the same gentleman who made a slingshot that launches machetes.
It was designed for killing Solid Snake?
...because this is NEWS.
Looks more crossbow with alternative non-bolt ammo. Slingshot makes me think of the classic wristrocket. Those and fireworks have gone together like peanut butter and jelly for at least a century or so. The only better use for a slingshot is probably water balloons although you've got to be careful not to rip them apart at launch. As kids we also used balls of crumpled paper both in wrist rockets and potato guns for indoor entertainment. Only occasionally broke a window with that ammo. Sometimes the potato gun would set the paper ball on fire if you used liquid propellant which is either a bonus or a problem depending on situation. So this patentable tech has at least 30 years of prior art, at least that I'm willing to admit to.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Has France surrendered yet?
I was in Berlin for new years. These things are pretty loud. There were some people a few doors down tossing them out their apartment window on to the street every few seconds for several hours. Every block down the street was like this too. Crazy awesome way to celebrate the new years. It also makes the 4th of July look kinda weak. The only things you can get now in many US states are considered "kids" fireworks here.
Dear Failed Troll:
'type cd' will tell you that it's a built-in command, part of the shell. Thus, it's 'man bash' or 'man ksh' or 'help cd'. You're (not) welcome.
not entirely sure why you would need a slingshot to light something that you can usually buy with a rocket attached in any firework shop. just light the rocket and away you go. and as for "easily crashes through a card board box", the UK rockets will blow a hole through a window or blow the exhaust of a car.
portfolio
I think between movies and Mythbusters my expectations for explosions are entirely out of whack with "common" explosions in reality, or at least what i expect to be shown off in internet videos. Those firecracker explosions were a lot quieter than i was expecting (at least as recorded in the video) and i was hoping to see either the cardboard box or the ballistic gel actually be broken apart by the explosion, but no such luck.
They seemed like the kind of thing that the Mythbusters would get when trying to reproduce the myth. The kind where they'd decide the myth was a failure and then go on and try to replicate the results with progressively larger amounts of explosive. Although given that they almost always end up having to scale things up i guess it makes sense that a "normal" firecracker just isn't that impressive.
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Those type of devices have been illegal in this area since the '70's at
that time they were a "problem".
Minus the rubber band, add a cover to the breach and you have a "Zip gun"
and a very efficient survival weapon.
shooting a nail with just a black cat fire cracker and a rubber band holding down the breach cover
and "it will pin a person to the wall"* a quote from the local newspaper.
After reading that quote my grandmother says "that must be a very large nail".
Even firecrackers are illegal here! How I envied this hint hint nudge nugde dude when
he mentioned them being legal for a day or two.
Tell me again how more gun control laws will make us safer?
Here in the Netherlands a 12 year old boy was badly burnt by fireworks last night. He was helped by the police, who asked the onlookers to fetch a bucket of cold water for him. No one reacted; the sheep were too busy watching. As a thank you for the performance some lunatics found it necessary to ignite some heavy firecrackers very close to where the police were busy with the boy. Imagine what would have happened if one of those drunken morons would have had one of those firecracker shooters! Many more badly injured people, because those things will be used to see how far you can shoot a 'live' firecracker; not how high. And this time it will be innocent people on the streets who will get injured instead of the morons themselves.
-- Cheers!
Once he embedded metal into a firework that makes it into a bomb which is highly illegal in the United States.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Replying to undo incorrect (thanks /.) moderation...
Unless he's putting these things down his pants, I don't see the Darwin connection.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
This happened to me. At a concert a few years back, some fucking idiot behind me decided to light off bottle rockets. One landed on my shoulder, went off, blew a chunk of my chin off, and blew out my right ear. I can live with the deafness, but the constant day-in day-out ringing is most irritating.
By the time the cops got to me, the fuckers had absconded. BTW, the local Free Clinic, with the help of some volunteer doctors from the local Veterans Hospital, provided first rate care until the ambulance arrived.
Due to funding issues, that Veterans Hospital has been closed, as has the Free Clinic.
In the 70s, I was in High School. A friend and I made our own home-made dynamite from nitroglycerin we also made at home mixed with a home-made aluminum based flash powder. We also made fulminate of mercury (I can still remember the strong apple scented cloud generated in its production.) We'd stick 1 oz, loads with a blasting cap (a glass ampule filled with home-made fulminate with a piece of miners fuse), to the top of an Estes 'E' engine rocket motor with fins attached. The things would go up about 250 ft., launch the uber cherry bomb from the parachute charge and in 5 seconds go off with a profoundly satisfying thump.
A neighbor kid bought several from us, and launched them from his back yard. He lit the fuses then ran inside his house to watch them go off where he would be unseen. Unfortunately, a police helicopter chose that moment to come through the neighborhood. Needless to say, the launch proved to be far more exciting than he originally planned. I remember the headaches that came from handling nitroglycerin. Fascinating stuff. Take an eye dropper full. Heat a spoon until it glows. Start dropping nitro on the hot spoon. At first it burns up, but as it cools, it get's to a temperature at which the nitro detonates, and every drop goes with a loud report. Very interesting stuff. Black powder fire crackers... eh.
Of course, anyone trying any of this today would be locked up, and they'd throw away the key... sad.
Blew his eye out trying to do exactly that. On the other hand, the glass eye lends itself to all sorts of party gags.
Old trick: Put two in a pipe, then you have a fire cracker launching fire cracker, which is a whole lot more spectacular.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
not being a fan of the TMFGIFY thing if you google |man cd| you get a link to
http://ss64.com/bash/cd.html
which states
"cd
Change Directory - change the current working directory to a specific Folder.
Syntax
cd [Options] [Directory]
Key
-P Do not follow symbolic links
-L Follow symbolic links (default)
If directory is not given, the value of the HOME shell variable is used.
If the shell variable CDPATH exists, it is used as a search path.
If directory begins with a slash, CDPATH is not used.
If directory is `-', this will change to the previous directory location (equivalent to $OLDPWD )."
but if you don't know this WTF are you doing in a terminal without details instructions??
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...which would only be better if it had tits and were on fire.
Nobody cares what the CAPTCHA for your post was.