Pages like this used to _be_ the world-wide web. Or most of it, anyway. I don't mean the (lack of) page style, I mean the writing. The irreverency of the subject matter. People shared whatever they thought was interesting, without regard to upvotes, likes, number of subscribers, and so on. I miss that a bit.
(Also, it doesn't really get any more mid-90's than a tip of the hat toward Dave Barry...)
In 1994 we were seeing this all for the first time. Everyone had intrusive thoughts like "how big can I make a pop tart fire", but very few had the ability to make digital photographs and upload it to the Internet for all to see. Today, everyone has the ability to upload it to the Internet for all to see, so someone probably already had your intrusive thought and already made $10,000 off of it.
It also had a high (relatively) barrier to entry, technically speaking. This limited contributors on the internet to a specific cohort of curious-minded individuals.
“At this point, the researchers also realized that the heat could inadvertently melt the adhesive cellophane and cause the flaming SPTs to suddenly eject from the toaster. Unfortunately, this did not occur.”
That made me laugh out loud. This research paper could make for a pretty good intro to scientific writing example for any of your 101s.
In Andy Weir's The Martian one of the characters uses a mixture of sugar and liquid oxygen as an IED. Loads of energy in sugar. Glycerin is also quite energy dense. I used to do chemistry demos for high school chem classes and the potassium permanganate and glycerin demo was always a spectacle.
For a lot of propulsion kinds of reactions you can mix a good oxidizer (liquid oxygen, high percentage hydrogen peroxide, fuming nitric acid) with any organic solid. Hotdogs, sugar, fat, or just anything really made mostly of carbon.
Are small, retail model rockets allowed to be launched from large public spaces in the US still? Or do they require a license, realtime transponder, and a bunch of bureaucratic red tape like RC aircraft that is effectively a dead hobby with a Hobson's choice between privacy invasion and cost, over-criminalization, and non-participation.
Oh wow this unlocked an elementary school memory I haven't thought about in awhile. I used to launch rockets with one of my teachers at my school's soccer field. I remember the smell of the engines distinctly.
If under a certain size, the rules are basically "as long as it isn't hazardous" which is vague but more or less requires common sense.
It's also not that hard to comply with RC aircraft regulations.
Plus, drones are everywhere, it's not exactly a dead hobby. Most of the people who were interested in other kinds of RC aircraft are more attracted to the much easier to handle quadcopter types.
This is just "rocket candy" right? My friend made this stuff a whole bunch when we were teens. Once during a summer break from college, we lit up a watermelon sized chunk of the stuff, producing a house sized plume of white smoke and a mild explosion.
It's pretty fun! Maybe don't build missiles with it and attempt to kill your neighbor with it though, seems like the least fun possible use for it.
It's also opportunistic exploitation of supplies which would be likely to pass through an imports blockade, as has been the case in Gaza.
Both sugar and fertiliser are basic-needs goods, with obvious nonmilitary applications. The fact that they can be combined (with other dual-purpose and low-cost materials, such as steel piping) to create ballistic weapons with ranges (and accuracies) of tens of kilometres is useful to Hamas and of course highly problematic for Israel.
What the source I'd linked noted was that though the rockets are individually highly inaccurate, en mass they become effective area denial weapons (effectively aerial mines), and a highly-asymmetric cost advantage over Israel's Iron Dome ballistic missile defence systems. A Qassam rocket costs less than $1,000, whilst a single shot by Iron Dome is on the order of $100,000, for a 100:1 cost advantage to the attacker. Even given Israel's vastly greater economic capacity over Hamas, that stings.
Not quite, it contains a little bit of water and will be fine sitting on a bench in an open beaker. But you should really avoid touching it or having it touch anything, particularly anything with carbon in it.
This reminds me of the one time I microwaved a Pop-Tart at school. I was grade 4 and young me thought that a Pop-Tart on 30 seconds taste great, a Pop-Tart on 3 minutes would taste amazing!
When I opened up the door I could see a small volcano had formed in the middle of my Pop-Tart and smoke was pouring out of the middle. Embarrassed me slammed the door shut and ran back to my seat and watched in horror as the whole lunch room started talking excitedly. Also the dread I felt when the teachers asked who did it and in unison everyone turned and pointed at me.
I didn't get in trouble, but I didn't microwave Pop-Tarts again. All these years later it is a great story about young stupid me!
We teach our Scouts how Doritos make excellent firestarters. Of course, you only need one or two to star a fire, yet a large family-size sack is required for a typical Scouts meeting.
I read that 1993 Dave Barry article when it came out, as a teen, and it made me fall in lifelong love with Dave Barry's work. It's such a blast from the past to see the references to it here.
Reminds of the thermal lance made of bacon, a compressed bacon slug, a coaxial feed of oxygen, all ignited with oxy-acetylene . The lance is one of the favourite tools I've ever gotten to use, it's simplicity is amazing, and capability surprising.
A friend and I used the "www.example.com/~username" webspace that came w/ our dialup accounts to make our own "site" with "experiments" inspired by this one around the same time. (Nothing involving fire, sadly.) We borrowed heavily from the tone. We even tried to make use of gratuitous initialisms, too.
At this point, the researchers also realized that the heat could inadvertently melt the adhesive cellophane and cause the flaming SPTs to suddenly eject from the toaster. Unfortunately, this did not occur.
I destroyed 2 toaster ovens with pop tarts when I was 5. I would turn on the toaster and forget about it watching cartoons. I can confirm they burn very well.
No, it didn’t burn down. A cabinet had to be replaced. I was left to my own vices a lot. I ended up learning a lot of proper firefighting protocols at a young age.
I remember this from 1994, reading it in the uni computer lab. These was a meme at the time, before the word meme came about.
Its interesting that there were photos, that was quite unusual for the time. Notice that they are in .gif format. Digital cameras were quite rare back then, and the resolution on the photos looks quite fine so I'm thinking these are probably film-photos that were developed and then scanned on a scanner.
>These was a meme at the time, before the word meme came about
It wasn't used regularly on the internet until into the 2000s, but the word "meme" was coined by Dawkins in 1976, as a direct analog to biological "genes"
I vaguely recall some movie where a jammed toaster with two pop-tarts, under the kitchen cabinets with other flammable items was used to create an accidental fire.
Every time this pops up on HN, I’m reminded of the XKCD comic “Ten thousand”[0]
Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow Torches was one of the first websites I looked at when I got connected to the Internet back in late ‘94. It makes me very happy to know that the site is still there and people are still finding it for the first time.
I think that demonstrations like this are great ways to teach kids healthy eating habits. My middle school health class included a joint day with a science teacher that left a lasting impression. Seeing the amount of energy contained in a single gummy bear put things into perspective!
I was kinda hoping the Pop-Tarts themselves would be blowtorches.
Unrealistic? Perhaps. But I set you this challenge: make a pastry of the correct shape and size with fruity filling of viscosity and reactivity such that, when ignited, it produces a steady flame and/or propels itself into the air.
From my accidental experimentation in the 90s (our toaster would occasionally not pop the toast out) , I can confirm that the frosted strawberry pop tart also create a nice flame. Given the higher amount of sugar and calories, I guess they'd have more fuel to burn.
We do, sort of, just not very efficiently --- we burn up to 10 calories of petro-chemical energy in our industrial farming practices to get 1 calorie of food energy.
My college rock band had a silly tradition of burning a nitrocellulose pick as a sacrifice to the rock gods before a show. Ping Pong balls sound like even more fun!
Yes- they have about the same energy content and will burn about the same.
High fructose corn syrup is sugar, and is very similar to table sugar (sucrose). It's about 42% fructose and 58% glucose, while table sugar (sucrose) is a disaccharide, of fructose and glucose bonded together in a 1:1 ratio, so table sugar ends up having slightly more fructose and slightly less glucose.
(Also, it doesn't really get any more mid-90's than a tip of the hat toward Dave Barry...)