Long-Overdue Pyrotechnics

It was no summer night in particular when Douglas and I found ourselves weilding ten propane-filled party balloons and a lighter.

Most likely we had just finished playing ping-pong after a bar-b-que dinner with the families. The Dads probably pulled rank and booted us of the table. We found ourselves on the back porch reciting the lines from Kipling's Jungle Book:

me: 'What do you want to do?'

doug: 'I don't know. What do you want to do?'

me: 'I don't know. What do you want to do?'

doug: 'I don't know. What do you want to do?'

me: 'I don't know. What do you want to do?'

doug: 'Oh, be quiet.'

pause

me: 'So... What do you want to do?'

doug: 'C'mon now, don't start that again!'

My eyes rested on the gas grill, still out from the evening's cookout. And then it just came out, almost too easily, "Wanna fill some balloons with propane and see if we can get them to explode?" I asked it more as a probe to guage Doug's reaction. If he got excited, we could give it a go. If he freaked, the comment could easily pass as a joke.

He freaked. And we gave it a go anyway.

Filling balloons with propane is so ridiculously easy it should be illegal. I won't go into the details, but in a few short minutes we were each holding armfuls of balloons of explosive gas.

I can not emphasize this enough: We were very, very, very nervous.

Perfecting the method of actually exploding the balloons, however, took much longer. We did not know what to expect when and if the balloon exploded, so we handled them like they were nukes.

Our first iteration was tying the balloon to the middle of a 70 foot length of string, each of us holding an end, then dangling the balloon (safely away from our persons) over a candle. The candle melted the balloon, the gas rushed out, and blew out the candle.

For the second generation we poked holes in the fatty part of the balloon (thanks Mr. Wizard!) to allow a stream of gas to blow out of the balloon. This produced better results, as the gas would ignite when it drifted over the balloon, but the balloon would still not explode.

At this point in time we had been at this for about an hour. An hour of intense if-I-make-the-wrong-move-I'm-going-to-blow-up-the-neighborhood feelings coupled with extreme anticipation. We were getting worn out and we wanted to see some action! I foolishly recited "Go big or go home" and proceeded to phase 3.

We procured a metal bucket and placed the leaking balloon into the bucket. I sat behind the bucket and reached around with a lighter and waited. It worked perfectly. The bucket focused the explosion in one direction, and kept me relatively cool. (I just found out that LP gas (propane) burns at 2950°F in free air). We had done it. We were like the freaking Wright brothers.

We knew we had to document our monumentous discovery so we grabbed my video camera. The following video clip is the first take, un-edited footage from that night. Douglas is narrating.

As incredible as the explosion was, for me, the most memorable part of the night was when we showed the video to my dad. He enjoyed it, and wasn't as suprised at our stupidity as I thought he would be. But after the video we told him about all of our trials and errors to arrive at this conclusion. Being the engineer that he is he reached into his briefcase and pulled out his PDA with his Hazerdous Materials catalog and said:

Of course you had problems getting the propane to explode. The environment inside the balloon was oversaturated with LP gas. The Upper Explosive Limit (UEL) for LP is... (reading his PDA) 9.5%. There wasn't enough oxygen to burn to make an explosion. Next time try keeping the gas levels between 1.8% and 9.5%.

If you didn't know already: my dad is the greatest.

We spent the rest of the night driving around town showing the video to anyone who would watch it. It was the funniest thing we had ever seen or heard... until we heard it played backwards.

Endnote: Douglas, my deepest apologies for taking the better part of two years to get this posted on the internet. I can't wait til the next time we get to hang out. Love ya, man.