Making bubbles in the pool

February 23, 2009 12:31 PM

Got some dry ice? Got a swimming pool? Well, what are you waiting for? Inquisitive dogs will be confused! Start with a small chunk. Next, take a 60-pound block of dry ice and kick it into the jacuzzi. Okay, so you're looking for more of a thrill? Try a dry ice depth charge! (If you don't have a pool, a frozen lake will do.)
posted by not_on_display (68 comments total)

My dad said he used to take tongs and throw blocks off the dock in Bar Harbor. A kid asked his father what the bubbles were and the dad told him it was "pipes" with utter certainty.
posted by dunkadunc at 12:41 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

That was good, but I enjoyed this Dumb kids + dry ice video that came up on the related stuff much, much more.

If you're gonna play with things that go boom, do it right.
posted by Chan at 12:46 PM on February 23, 2009 [4 favorites]

The adult me thinks this is pretty dumb, but the 13 year old me really wishes he'd known how to get his hands on dry ice.
posted by diogenes at 12:57 PM on February 23, 2009

You know what else is cool? Diet Coke and Mentos!
posted by Pastabagel at 1:00 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

I kept waiting for the dudes in the frozen lake to panic when they realized they'd just planted a bomb under the ice they were standing on. Hold my beer, indeed.
posted by pjern at 1:06 PM on February 23, 2009 [5 favorites]

I have always wanted to put a thick layer of polystyrene packing peanuts on the water of a pool, just for the visual awesomeness of seeing someone dive into it and "disappear".
posted by everichon at 1:07 PM on February 23, 2009 [4 favorites]

but the 13 year old me really wishes he'd known how to get his hands on dry ice.

They sell it at the grocery store.
posted by delmoi at 1:09 PM on February 23, 2009

That block of co2 didn't weigh no 60lbs.
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:10 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

They sell it at the grocery store.

Not everywhere.
When I was a kid, it was hard to come by.

We had to make do with "liberated" black powder.
posted by madajb at 1:16 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

That's not how I make bubbles in the pool.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 1:16 PM on February 23, 2009 [2 favorites]

You know what else is cool? Diet Coke and Mentos!

Last time I was there, they finally replaced all of the ceiling tiles at the church where I helped organize a diet coke/mentos thing (something about realizing your potential, I think). It turns out that you should do your explosion-height check with room temperature soda, not with bottles straight from your freezing cold trunk.
posted by niles at 1:16 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

That block of co2 didn't weigh no 60lbs.

Dry ice weighs about 95 pounds per cubic foot, so: yeah huh it did!
posted by aubilenon at 1:19 PM on February 23, 2009 [2 favorites]

We had to make do with "liberated" black powder.

My little brother stole the keys to the gun safe off my dad's belt (no, really. off his belt) and tried to make a "gun" with copper pipe. It blew up in his face, but he was lucky. All he got was second-degree burns on his forehead.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:20 PM on February 23, 2009

Real men use barrels of sodium metal.
posted by logicpunk at 1:21 PM on February 23, 2009 [9 favorites]

I don't get why it makes such a big shock - are those pop bottles really so strong? How does it get enough force to shake the ground?
posted by GuyZero at 1:22 PM on February 23, 2009

Sez YouTube commenter:

> this is fake because ice needs oxygen
posted by KokuRyu at 1:23 PM on February 23, 2009 [6 favorites]

Video of Sodium Leakage accident at Monju prototype breeder reactor (Tsuruga, Fukui, Japan, 1995)
posted by KokuRyu at 1:28 PM on February 23, 2009

FWOOOSH!

My love for dry ice knows no bounds.
posted by lolichka at 1:29 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

The adult me thinks this is pretty dumb, but the 13 year old me really wishes he'd known how to get his hands on dry ice.

The dog in me is thinking WHAT IS THAT! WHAT IS THAT! WHAT IS THAT!
posted by Flunkie at 1:32 PM on February 23, 2009 [13 favorites]

My reaction to the 60lb video: "Dude! Lift with your legs, not with your back!" It's official: I'm old.
posted by plinth at 1:38 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

something tells me that none of these videos are carbon-neutral.
posted by sexyrobot at 1:41 PM on February 23, 2009

It should be noted that dry ice bombs can be quite dangerous. Some people I knew in high school used 2 liter soda bottle dry ice bombs to blow up mailboxes--we're talking raining shrapnel here. It's easy to put too much water in also, which acts like a kind of short fuse. Back in the early 90s making a video about dry ice bomb construction was something that the fire marshal wanted to question people about.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:53 PM on February 23, 2009

everichon: "I have always wanted to put a thick layer of polystyrene packing peanuts on the water of a pool, just for the visual awesomeness of seeing someone dive into it and "disappear"."

My local university collects huge bins of nothing but foam peanuts that they hate dealing with and would love to get rid of if your looking for source ideas. Just make sure that you separate out the the cellulose ones so they don't dissolve and clog up the pool. If you have the access you could even dry them out later and put them back in the bins when you're done.
posted by Science! at 1:56 PM on February 23, 2009

We occasionally used to use dry ice to cool our beer at the end-of-the-week division-wide pizza parties we held in grad school. (Our division included the Chemistry department, so yeah, it's all in who you know.) It'd cool the beer down pretty effectively, and it looked a hell of a lot cooler than regular ice.
posted by Johnny Assay at 1:58 PM on February 23, 2009

I just discovered the pleasures of dry ice a few months ago, completely accidentally (and I'm in my mid-40s). My significant other ordered some steaks from Omaha Steaks and they arrived in a white cooler. I opened it up and was pulling out boxes of meat and I accidentally touched the dry ice they ship the meat with, and tore a little skin off. And THEN I found the caution label. I've always been a master of timing.

So I dumped the dry ice in the sink, thinking it'd be like melting any ol' ice. Hah, my sink turned into a scary witches-brew-looking thing, smoke flowing over the edges. I was awestruck. (And yes, I am VERY easily amused!) So for the last few months I've been encouraging my SO to buy more stuff from Omaha Steaks. She thinks it's just because I like good meat. That's true, I do. But I love the dry ice too! What's not to like? Dry ice, shipped right to your door, and it even comes with steaks!
posted by jamstigator at 2:02 PM on February 23, 2009 [61 favorites]

We once used our science centre liquid nitrogen supply to make Tequila Pops; only problem was they stuck to your tongue...
posted by sporb at 2:07 PM on February 23, 2009

It seems like every crew of teenage miscreants has a demolition expert. Ours used to build pipe bombs with waterproof fuses that he would hurl into the center of the lake so he could watch as the water surface pushed up into a bell-curve shape that would then violently vomit up smoke and fish carcasses. After a few more minutes more dead fish, like hundreds of them, would bob up to the surface all across the lake. It always kind of surprised me that of all the dudes I knew growing up who would eventually go to jail, this kid actually was not one of them.
posted by The Straightener at 2:11 PM on February 23, 2009 [6 favorites]

If you really want to have fun:

Pellets of dry ice
Large trough full of warm soapy water
Complete disregard for the consequences
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 2:14 PM on February 23, 2009 [5 favorites]

When I was a kid, we used hydrochloric acid and aluminum foil.
posted by Stylus Happenstance at 2:15 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

GuyZero : I don't get why it makes such a big shock - are those pop bottles really so strong? How does it get enough force to shake the ground?

I can't verify that this is the video here at work, but Time Warp on discovery had an episode where they detonated a 2 liter dry ice bomb in super-slow-motion and it is readily obvious when you see the kind of shockwave that they produce that they could do some serious damage. Long story short: those bottles are really damn strong.

everichon : I have always wanted to put a thick layer of polystyrene packing peanuts on the water of a pool, just for the visual awesomeness of seeing someone dive into it and "disappear".

One of my kitties, "swimming" in packing peanuts.
posted by quin at 2:19 PM on February 23, 2009 [13 favorites]

There's a video somewhere on YouTube of a clever thing you can do with dry ice, which is to put it in a large, flat bowl filled with water, then draw over the edge of the bowl the best bubble mixture you can manage. The result is that a large bubble forms, fills with fog, then does a slow-motion burst, spilling chilly opaque fog all over.

Also, after submerging a large chunk of dry ice in water for a while, blow off the fog and look at the water before the fog returns; the water will have a blue-green cast to it.

Also, am I the only person who has noticed that some people can handle dry ice with bare hands and not lose skin? I don't squeeze it or otherwise maintain a tight grip, but I can pick it up, move it around, and as long as it is no more than a few seconds, no problem. I'm callus-free and do not have insensate pincers for hands. I've seen other people do it, but then I hear all kinds of horror stories. What gives?
posted by adipocere at 2:22 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

I accidentally touched the dry ice they ship the meat with, and tore a little skin off.
Growing up in Hong Kong in the sixties a regular visitor on his rounds was the ice lolly man. He was on a bicycle and on the back was a big box containing a block of dry ice and the ice lollies. His hands were totally scarred from years of having to reach in and pull them out.
posted by tellurian at 2:31 PM on February 23, 2009

What's the dog's name? Handyman? Idi Amin? Whatever it is, I'm totally charmed by the narrator asking, "What'd'ya think, [Annieman]?"
posted by Morrigan at 2:54 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

The full, unexpurgated story of what happens when dry ice is mixed with blue toilet acid at 33,000 feet.

Always makes me laugh. :)
posted by zarq at 3:23 PM on February 23, 2009 [23 favorites]

Also, in a post I made about LN₂ three years ago, jlawen linked to a video showing what happened when Penguincon founder Rob Landley tossed a bowl of liquid nitrogen into a swimming pool.

Cool effect.
posted by zarq at 3:27 PM on February 23, 2009 [3 favorites]

What's the dog's name? Handyman? Idi Amin? Whatever it is, I'm totally charmed by the narrator asking, "What'd'ya think, [Annieman]?"

I wondered too. It's Andyman according to the description.
posted by Ugh at 3:38 PM on February 23, 2009

GuyZero: I don't get why it makes such a big shock - are those pop bottles really so strong?

Your average 2-liter bottle is designed to withstand shipping filled with your favorite carbonated beverage; shipping involving jolts, bumpy rides, temperature changes, denting, pressure change, whatever. They are pretty sturdy. So when you build up enough pressure to pop them from inside, the release of that pressure makes a big boom.

Stylus Happenstance : When I was a kid, we used hydrochloric acid and aluminum foil.

Ditto.
Ahh... Those were the days! What wonderful memories...
posted by Avelwood at 3:42 PM on February 23, 2009

College made these shenanigans so easy.

Forty cents a pound, no questions asked. No, check that - once the dispensary person asked me what I was using twenty pounds of dry ice for.

"Um... party?"

"Have fun!"

A lot of it just went to cooling my drinks, unfortunately. And since I don't drink soda that fast, it helped recarbonate all the flat bottles that were in our refrigerator.
posted by backseatpilot at 4:48 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

I am so pissed off I watched the first few minutes of that swimming pool/dry ice video. So. boring. Dude, you guys. Get another hobby. And dress up a little bit if you're going to make a half-assed video for YouTube, k?
posted by agregoli at 5:02 PM on February 23, 2009

Dry ice: fun in real life; boring on YouTube.
posted by kozad at 6:39 PM on February 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

Also, am I the only person who has noticed that some people can handle dry ice with bare hands and not lose skin?

It's possible, but tricky. Your hands have to be dry as a bone and you can't maintain contact for more than a fraction of a second, sort of shuffling the chips about in your hand. Also, if you do it for too long (more than a few seconds), your skin cools too much and the ice begins to stick.

Even cooler is the stick-your-hand-in-a-dewar-of-liquid-nitrogen trick: a hot dry hand can last a second or two in liquid N₂ because the heat from your hand creates a gas cushion. But, just like the dry ice, wait too long and you can break off fingers.

Neither of these should be attempted at home, but should be reserved for experts, like untrained chem grad students during university science week.
posted by bonehead at 8:17 PM on February 23, 2009

*gazes up at escape pods with wild eyes....*

*wimpers*..........
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 8:54 PM on February 23, 2009

there's enough liquid and warmth in your mouth that if you keep moving it around, you can chew up small amounts of dry ice without damage and to very cool effect (breathin' smoke!). this was a favorite of my brother and I after we realized that our neighborhood grocery sold it for very cheap.
The following two weeks had a great deal of dry ice shenanigans, including carbonating things that Should Not be carbonated (a cubic inch of chips in a nalgene bottle, screw tight, wait until morning), like milk, fruits, and pudding, the classic Dry Ice Bomb, and filling the trunk of or car with CO2 (accidental and dangerous, but extremely cool when we opened it).

here is a yt video with a kid with Dry Ice in his mouth
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 11:05 PM on February 23, 2009

Okay, so, fellas. What's the funnest thing I can do with a quantity of dry ice?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:05 AM on February 24, 2009

Once, my friend and I bought some dry ice from the Baskin and Robbin's by the Broiler and we snuck it into Henry Thiele's where we ordered some hot cocoa and put in little pieces so it smoked and bubbled. The waitress looked at us and wasn't fooled, but we pretended like it was some special experimental medicine a doctor had us on. Turns out, not only did it make our cocoa unappetizingly cold, but it also made it taste like pants. But we thought we were prit-teee cool.
Yeah, a couple of cool 11-year-olds in a booth at Henry Thiele's—where the mean customer/waitress age was probably 71.
posted by blueberry at 12:43 AM on February 24, 2009

Some of my acquaintances at university were at the intersection of geek/nutters and used to conduct some, ahem, interesting science experiments, largely using chemicals pilfered from the labs. As an Arts student this amazed me, but I'm still slightly worried that these people may now be in charge of their own laboratories, people, dogs or even their shoelaces.

Experiment 1*: Pour a large quantity of liquor into a large drum. Add lemonade. Use a small amount of dry ice to give a bubbly/cloudy effect. Use majority of dry ice in water filled lemonade bottles to throw near couples in rowing boats on nearby river, where they explode. If angry Romeo comes over, push non-sciencey friend to front of group.

Experiment 2: When the policeman arrives to investigate claims of depth charges being thrown at passing tourists, take one piece of drainpipe, stuff a large potato in one end, cap the other end, drill a hole in the cap through which hairspray is sprayed in, point drainpipe gun policeman, place a flame to the hole in the cap. Wonder how dumb you have to be to fire a potato at a policeman. If policeman comes over, point to non-sciencey friend.

Experiment 3: Trust friend who is concocting some mixture in a plastic tub that the resulting chemical reaction will be harmless. Trust second friend that he understands the law of physics sufficiently. Attach full body harness to non-sciencey friend, and attach large bungee rope to the back of the harness. Get the "victim" to get into metal cage, attached to crane hook, and jump out of the metal cage when it gets to 140ft high. As non-sciency friend gets within 2 ft of the ground, explode chemical concoction, creating blinding coloured light and firing the thick plastic tub lid into the jumper's chest, creating rather impressive circular bruise.

Oh, and if you piss about with dry ice on your bare hands too much it stings first and burns second.

* Note: all experiments happened a long time before 9/11, in the UK, when massive overreactions by police to minor "threats" were unusual.
posted by MuffinMan at 4:32 AM on February 24, 2009 [5 favorites]

This one is cute, mainly due to the vessel used.
posted by Eideteker at 4:58 AM on February 24, 2009

When I was a kid, we used hydrochloric acid and aluminum foil.

We never did that one. Dry ice will build pressure really quick so it's not that great for making 20oz pop bottle bombs. We used to use sugar, chlorine and water in a Snapple bottle. You get about a good minute before it blows, so there is plenty of run away time. They will blow a mailbox apart, or actually more often off the post.

You can also use dry ice as a cheap way of getting rid of warts!
posted by P.o.B. at 5:40 AM on February 24, 2009

Yeah, two liter pop bottle dry ice bomb + fraternity shower stall = not good for my undergraduate experience.
posted by mrmojoflying at 5:46 AM on February 24, 2009

My own youtube contribution -- dry ice, water, and very little soap.
posted by hexatron at 5:59 AM on February 24, 2009

Yeah, I was stunned by what happens to the second bottle in this video from above; it floats to the surface, and it's increased in size by like 300%-- I mean, the plastic has stretched beyond what I thought it could, then BOOM. The thing looks huge. How come the cap doesn't blow off first? Do they glue it with cyanoacrylate or something?
posted by exlotuseater at 6:26 AM on February 24, 2009

I live in a kind of magical mystery land where I can go through a drive-through window and purchase beer AND dry ice. (Philly suburb). We've used it for camping -- pulling out rock hard ice cream on the third day of a camping trip is pretty fabulous.

Also, if you're not into steak, you can get a box of dry ice shipped to your home packed in delicious ice cream.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:33 AM on February 24, 2009

So for the last few months I've been encouraging my SO to buy more stuff from Omaha Steaks. She thinks it's just because I like good meat. That's true, I do. But I love the dry ice too! What's not to like? Dry ice, shipped right to your door, and it even comes with steaks!

I really feel compelled to say that I find Omaha Steaks to be just awful. I can get better cuts at my local Ralphs most days--every day at Whole Foods or Bristol Farms or by going to an actual butcher.

The packaging and shipping is incredibly wasteful, too. Steak doesn't need an elaborate multi link supply chain and direct mail catalog promotion. The dry ice just emphasizes the wasteful absurdity of the whole proposition.

Bonus Hint: you can wrap a strip of bacon around a filet mignon yourself---no need to mail-order the item pre-assembled.


It made me sad to see this turn up in the sidebar.

posted by snuffleupagus at 6:39 AM on February 24, 2009

I love dry ice. I made a jetpack for a James Bond party.
posted by eamondaly at 8:58 AM on February 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

I too can handle dry ice for short periods with my bare hands. Mainly I use this not-very-superpower to construct tiny eppie bombs for to terrorize our technician:
Step one: get something shipped overnight that has to remain frozen (many reagents esp. polymerases, restriction enzymes)
Step two: open the styrofoam box with the reagent. Put reagent in the freezer. You now have a box filled with dry ice pellets. We can't put them in the sink or otherwise dispose of them because some numbskull installed glass pipes on our lab sinks. So the pellets must sublimate.
Step three: the best place for them to sublimate is inside a 1.5 ml plastic tube. Place a small shard of dry ice into the tube and cap it.
Step four: toss the tube onto the floor underneath your technician's desk. He may notice it, but more likely he's farting around on facebook and will forget about it shortly. DO NOT DO THIS IF HE IS DOING ACTUAL WORK.
Step five: Patience.
Step six. Within a minute or two, depending on the size of your shard, enough gas will have come off the dry ice to build up sufficient pressure within the tube for it to explode. LOUDLY. and quite suddenly.
Step seven: Laugh maniacally.

note that this can only be done so often, and not with technicians of delicate nerves.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:17 AM on February 24, 2009

Step Eight: Provide technician with a clean pair of pants.
Step Nine: Technician begins plotting revenge.
Step Ten: Sleep with one eye open....
posted by zarq at 10:01 AM on February 24, 2009

@ stupid sexy Flanders: what Philly suburb is this? Is it somewhere in Delco? Or somewhere rural?
posted by LilBucner at 11:59 AM on February 24, 2009

The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew: here is a yt video with a kid with Dry Ice in his mouth

Poor Beaker.

---------

snuffleupagus: It made me sad to see this turn up in the sidebar.

You're always sad. And you don't really exist! la la la la

---------

OOOYEAH any more muppets who have something to say, bring it on!

Anyway, I know what to do next time I take a bath: tons-o-bubbles provided by dry ice and whatever soap is around, enhanced by these glowing floating cubes that my girlfriend got as swag from some webby conference.
posted by not_on_display at 12:06 PM on February 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

it floats to the surface, and it's increased in size by like 300%-- I mean, the plastic has stretched beyond what I thought it could, then BOOM.

Take a look at the screw top of any plastic pop bottle. See how thick the plastic is? The whole thing was once that thick. Plastic bottles start out as blanks with the screw top plus about three or four inches of tube that's later inflated into a distinctive shape. The plastic can inflate a lot more, but then the structural integrity would be too compromised to retain pressurized contents (e.g. carbonated beverages) reliably.

In high school, I worked as a grocery clerk. 2L bottles of store brand pop came off the truck in cases of eight. The cases, unlike the reusable pallet stackers Coke and Pepsi came in, were a short cardboard box covered in thick, heat-sealed plastic. We had to use box-cutters to open them. If there was a sale on, we'd have to rush to unpack whole truckloads of the stuff and get it onto the shelves. Think about that: Hundreds of freshly shaken bottles of pop in close proximity to underpaid teenagers with box-cutters.

Trust me, the back of your favourite grocery store is probably a lot stickier than you'd like.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:45 PM on February 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

As long as soft drink residue is the only thing making it sticky, I don't mind too much.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:57 PM on February 24, 2009

I don't get why it makes such a big shock - are those pop bottles really so strong?

Apparently, the specification is that they must be able to withstand at least 180 psi, about 13 times atmospheric pressure.

Energy = pressure * volume, so a 2L bottle releases about 2.5 kJ when it explodes, at a minimum. For comparison, a stick of dynamite releases about 2000 kJ when it detonates. (Energy released alone isn't necessarily a good measure of how dangerous something is, though; a candy bar can contain as much energy as a stick of dynamite, but the candy bar's energy is released over hours or days, not in a fraction of a second like the dynamite.)
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:06 PM on February 24, 2009 [3 favorites]

Now that's what I'm talking about. That's some good math right there.

Could you gang together 5 or 6 bottles and just blow all the water right our of your pool? YouTubers, please get on it!
posted by GuyZero at 4:15 PM on February 24, 2009

I enjoyed this Dumb kids + dry ice video

Ouch. Lucky he didn't lose a finger or two.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:57 PM on February 24, 2009

Also good for longer term food storage on the playa.
posted by freebird at 10:33 PM on February 24, 2009

Could you gang together 5 or 6 bottles and just blow all the water right our of your pool? YouTubers, please get on it!

In my extensive experience building these things, there's no freakin' way to calibrate them well enough to get them to go off that close together. Even if you precisely measure the water and the CO₂, the surface area of the dry ice is the biggest factor. And once it starts subliming in water, it's nearly impossible to predict what the surface area is going to look like--it's a chaotic process.

So, no, you couldn't.
posted by Netzapper at 5:09 AM on February 25, 2009

Alright, do I have a dry ice story for you. It was a fall afternoon, and I was in grade 9. My friend had recently created a fake identity ("CEO of Tritron Industries") to obtain dry ice from a chemical supply store for the school play (MacBeth, witches gotta have their brew). We had leftovers, and were mucking about with it in my backyard. We were not stupid and were well aware of all the things that could go wrong... or so we thought. Putting dry ice into coke bottles with water, shaking, and tossing them into the ravine behind my house - BLAM! - was keeping us thoroughly entertained, and we continued doing this for probably an hour.

It must have been 4pm when we heard sirens. A lot of sirens. We were a little worried, but I kept repeating "oh, that can't be us... can it?" Understandably we were good little kids and a little paranoid. Unfortuantely, things escalated rapidly, as several fire trucks pulled up to the street below the ravine, and firefighters in full gear, with axes, began scaling the ascent to my house. (This is more than a little odd, as there is a front street). I decided to man up and yell to them and explain what was going on. They told me that there were reports of gunshots, and that the police would be here shortly - I explained that those were popping bottles and there was no issue, and the firefighters departed out the back just as several squad cars were pulling into the front. I wondered if men in fire coats with axes is the typical first response to shots fired, but didn't say anything.

We were in full blown panic by now, as three police officers were threatening to charge us with "mischief", but decided to keep playing it cool, and pray to god that my parents don't get home until it's all over and maybe just maybe it will all go away. The cops let themselves in since they thought they were deailng with a murder scene and we tried to calm them down - fortunately this is Canada and we didn't just get tased to begin with. They demanded to see this "dry ice" material that produced such huge explosions, or whatever - is it dangerous? Is this a controlled substance?? They clearly had no idea what they were dealing with. My friend opened the cooler to show them, and the cops say "We are going to have to have to confiscate this..." and then BENT DOWN WITH BARE HANDS TO GRAB A HUGE SLAB OF DRY ICE.

All of us lept up screaming "NOOOOOOO!!!" and thank god the man paused a split second beforehand. We explained what dry ice was and how you should never, ever touch it. In my mind I contemplated how this was all about to go completely fucking sideways and we were truly screwed. The police discussed amongst themselves a moment, and apparently decided they didn't want to confiscate it after all, and quietly retreated.

I finally told my parents about the entire incident months later, and they laughed.
posted by mek at 5:46 PM on February 27, 2009 [8 favorites]

Next, take a 60-pound block of dry ice and kick it into the jacuzzi.

That would have been a lot more interesting if he broke up the cube. As is, it has limited surface area and just bubbles up. In 20 or 30 pieces it would have probably boiled over and shot gas everywhere. What a waste of dry ice.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:47 AM on February 28, 2009

Chlorine and brake fluid. Do it in a bottle if you want to hurt yourself.

Caustic soda and aluminium foil in the bottom of a glass bottle. Add water, stretch a balloon over the top, wait for it to fill with gas. Tie it off, poke a hole through the dangly bit, thread a piece of twisted paper through it. Light the paper, let the balloon float off. Kablam, fireball.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 6:04 AM on March 22, 2009