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Comment by technothrasher | Hacker News Reader

I'm reminded of when my son, who was six at the time, came into the house and announced that he and the neighbor's boy, nine, were building a bomb, and that he needed to get some stuff from the pantry. When I investigated what exactly was going on, they were putting "hot" things like black pepper and Tabasco into a plastic bowl and were going to "set it off" with a match.

Thankfully, that complete failure seems to have been the end of either of their mad scientist careers, as they are now twenty and twenty-three, and both well-adjusted, peaceful members of the community.

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When I was 5 or so, I was convinced that if I dropped a bowl of hot water into a bucket of cold water, I'd get big explosion. That experiment yielding lukewarm water ended my mad scientist career.

You should have collided water with antiwater.

When I was 7 or 8 a friend and I crimped the heads off strike-anywhere match sticks, wrapped them in foil, and struck them with hammers and rocks. They were quite loud, one even set off a sound-activated toy inside the house.

I make no claims as to how well adjusted I am, but I've at least survived 40-odd years of life since then.

When I was 12, I made a "smoke bomb" by placing a fire cracker in the bottom of a tube and topping it up with powdered clay. It shoot out a 4 m tall plume of dust, which was cool and all, but I thought it would look a lot more impressive with a black plume.

So I painstakingly ground down some charcoal to fine dust and redid the same experiment. That gave a much more impressive boom, but no dust plume, which puzzled me until I learned about dust explosions.

Age eleven and had access to a chemistry set that a relative gifted. It had sulfur, but the saltpeter, and charcoal came from elsewhere. The 1960s encyclopedia had the instructions.

Let the kids play.

This is actually a fun one, and kinda has some parallels to building a nuclear weapon.

I tried this as a grownup because I finally managed to get my hands on saltpeter (could only dream of it when kid). Followed the instructions, mixed everything in correct ratios, lit it with great care and fanfare and... hiss fizzle. I was so disappointed! I think it came down to purity of ingredients and not enough surface area.

Point is, there are certain details of the process required to make it truly work, that are not readily known; in a similar way with nuclear energy, the theory is pretty well known but some nitty gritty details like the implosion or detonator design are not.

As a kid I found saltpeter at an old-fashioned pharmacy and made gunpowder, and it also barely fizzled. I think you have to grind the ingredients much finer than a kid has patience for.

South africa was able to make a minimum viable weapon on a shoestring budget. They had access to nuclear reactors though.

> Let the kids play.

To a point. Plenty of people from previous generations with missing digits and hands thanks to play with commonly available fireworks of the area (Australia based, so no idea how common that remains in the US).

My own experiments from my youth also one time resulted in some shrapnel punching through a 5 inch thick concrete tile very close to someone’s head (thought we were safe behind said tiles).

Get involved with the kids blowing stuff up so the danger is within reasonable bounds.

When I was in college, I drove my carless chemistry geek friend to an agriculture store. Apparently they had a reasonably chemically pure fertilizer.

Thank God they didn't tell a chatbot about their little experiment. Their lives could have been ruined right there if the chatbot operator snitched on them and ordered a SWAT raid on your house.

When I was 24 and a PhD student, I wondered one day if I can eat condensed milk hanging head down.

Never let your age stop your curiosity.

But also learn from other's mistakes (and don't try to eat condensed milk when hanging head down)

This knowledge needs to be published

When I was younger in rural Appalachia, my local drug store still sold "chemicals" and I purchased salt peter and sulfur and proceeded to attempt to make smoke bombs. Didn't have a double boiler, so attempted to make it in the microwave. Needless to say, it didn't go too well.

I blame my dad though, he found the recipe online and printed it off at work to bring to me.

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