Looking for a fun, relatively safe way to make a loud boom! to wake up your neighbors? Do you have a small pile of dry ice? Are you will to accept the fact that I take no responsability for what happens to you if you follow these instructions? Then read on!

You will need:

  • Some dry ice
  • Some water
  • An empty softdrink bottle (I find 1.25L Coke bottles work best
  • Gloves to handle the dry ice with (optional, but highly recommended)
  • Eye protection. Only an idiot trys anything like this without eye protection.

The procedure

Break the dry ice up into pieces small enough to fit into the bottle. Place them into the bottle. Cover the dry ice with water - the temperature will help control the detonation delay (I suggest using room temperature water) The dry ice will start to bubble and give off carbon dioxide. Place the lid on the bottle - you will notice the bottle is immediately pressurized by the C02. Now place the bottle down (or throw it somewere) and stand back. Depending on how finely you broke up the dry ice and how warm the water was you will have between 30 seconds and 15 minutes untill the pressure builds up enough to rupture the bottle, resulting in a massive boom!

Common sense safety tips

Make sure your'e not too close when this happens, as the pressure wave is powerfull enough to break your eardrums. Also small shards of plastic may fly out - they're probably powerful not enough to cause serious injury unless they hit you in the eye, but it's still something to be aware of.

One should note, however fun dry ice bombs may be, that their legality may vary depending on your state/country. Here in the sunny state of California, they are classified as destructive devices by the ATF, and as such, are crimes to:

Not that it's hard to get away with it or anything. Not that I'd know, or anything. Nope.

Anyway, read up to make sure you're not committing a big no-no in... wherever you come from.

See Section 12303-12313 of the ATF document found here: http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/pdf/california.pdf

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