Re: Boise: anyone want a smoke-ring gun?

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

Ammonium hydroxide and HCl?  Makes a "nice" fine precipitate.  Very useful to
illustrate Graham's (diffusion) law.

The fog (mine from Radio Shack) doesn't smell like E. glycol.  The sales at the
Exploratorium said it was organic (like maybe cooking oil).

They aren't interested in the stability of a vortex ring!!!??

Have you tried blowing out a candle or match?  Also the collision of two rings?

I wonder if the fluid is PAM?  Thanks for the idea -- it's very inexpensive at
Costco.

bc


Kossom wrote:

> Howdy-
>
> From: Bernard Cleyet, Sent: 7/22/02 2:40 AM
> > Pray tell, what is the fluid?
>
> It is theater fog machine fluid. I bought an extra bottle, because I thought
> that I might run out of the original supply. I hope to live long enough to
> use the second bottle.
>
> It is probably glycol mixed with water. I have had no reactions from anyone
> around the lab, and it is supposedly on the GRAS list. Still, Equity tried
> to ban it from theaters as they claimed it increased the chance of actors
> developing asthma. The proposal failed, and many theaters still use it.
> Equity admitted however, it posed no danger for the audience, as glycol
> rarely instigates an attack itself. Rather they claimed that long term
> exposure is the problem.
>
> > P.s. have you found a correlation with interest in the gun and general
> > curiosity in addition to science.  Are any of the teachers who are not
> > interested in the gun still curious, excited, or whatever by their
> > field, or are they just "dead".
>
> They seem to be interested in their own fields. They just wonder what the
> point of the gun is. Basically they ask, "So?" or "Who cares?"
>
> To the others who have talked about how milk in water works fine, I agree,
> but I don't always want to submerge my lasers and equipment. Chalk dust
> makes everyone cough. Cigarette smoke is perfect, but, well, not at a high
> school.
>
> Incense is popular with the students, but it is designed not to make much
> smoke. The flavors often cause allergic reactions in me. I also break out
> from perfume and cologne.
>
> The chemistry teacher is fond of mixing a concentrated base and acid to make
> what he calls, "an ionic fog." It works great, but I am not comfortable
> around the stuf that likes to eat through my skin.
>
> Currently, I use one of those manual aerosols. It is sold in cooking shops
> for making your own cooking spray. It makes a relatively fine mist, but it
> gets everything soggy.
>
> Marc "Zeke" Kossover
>
> Marc "Zeke" Kossover