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Amateur Scientist Builds Thermite Grenade Cannon (gizmodo.com)
YouTube personality Colin Furze has built a homemade cannon which he's filmed launching grenades filled with thermite, "an especially nasty chemical composition made of metal power and oxide that burns as hot as 2,500 degrees Celsius." Furze once co-hosted Sky1's program Gadget Geeks, and he's since made a new career demonstrating strange science projects on YouTube. Furze's other homemade devices have included a rocket-powered go-kart and a knife that can also toast bread while it's cutting.
Thanks for playing, but he's British, not American. Try changing your TLA.
If he did amateur scientific experiments or research, he'd be an amateur scientist. He is more of an amateur engineer, if you'd call him that. Not to knock him, but I'd probably just call him a guy who builds cool stuff.
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That was pretty much obvious when he pronounced Aluminum as "Aluminium".
Actually, he's more an engineer but anyway, not my favorite video of him.
I'm was more impressed when he hydroformed a pulse jet
Elok
Reminds me of the flamethrower I made a few years back, neat stuff. I wish I had the equipment (And the free time) this guy does.
He might want to be a little safer (Flame retardant clothing, glasses, etc.) it looks like he didn't learn from his last incident:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You mean, the way he pronounced it correctly?
Signed,
the rest of the World.
1. Thermite is perfectly legal to own. It is not regulated by the ATF whatsoever.
We made it in high school chemistry class. Here is the recipe:
1. Powdered aluminum
2. Powdered rust
3. Mix
4. Ignite
The stuff does not explode. It just burns, and produces molten iron. We did it on a 1/2" steel plate out behind the school, and it burned through the steel.
Notes:
1. Our chemistry teacher was really cool
2. Always wear eye protection when doing stuff like this.
Just curious, where does that second 'i' come from in enunciating Aluminum
From its discoverer. He called it alumium, aluminum and aluminium in that historical order, and the different versions basically spread by diffusion.
OTOH, "solder" has only one spelling, but two pronunciations: in Britain they pronounce the L.
At least that's something that makes the world a little bit better. A "thermite grenade cannon"? Not so much.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't see why you'd need a grenade cannon just to get rid of termites. Seems like overkill.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Red herring. Helium should properly be called "helion".
As for aluminum/aluminium, I'll grant that aluminium is "correct" when we all also adopt "platinium", "lanthanium" and "molybdenium". For bonus points, we can go back and retcon iron to "ferrium", gold to "aurium", lead to "plumbium"...
And the name 'Colin' comes from the same root as the word 'colon.' So his name means 'Arse Farts!'
Pronouncing what does not exist?
We had a Texan come over as a maintenance manager at our plant when the previous one left suddenly (or was told to leave suddenly depending on who's story you believe). Lovely guy, very Texan complaining loudly about not being allowed a gun rack on his massive pick-up in Australia.
One day he bursts in to the reliability office and proclaims with incredible pride: "I finally figured out why you pronounce it aluminium!!!! You actually spell it with the second 'i' !!!!".
We're of English decent. Not only do we not pronounce what does not exist, quite often we actively avoid pronouncing things that do.
Greetings to you from your colourful neighbours across the pond. :-)
Seen his vids. Clever and crazy dude. At one point he used thermite to boil water for his tea... in about 5 seconds. The special kettle he built to do this was an amusing hack, and quite effective. The pulse jet kart started life as a pulse jet bicycle. AIUI he used to be a professional plumber, and now does these zany vids for income. Lots of fun to watch, but his Brit-version of fratboy attitude grates on me after a while.