Fire starters (not magnesium based)

[Tended Tripod]

I saw something on the news last night about a guy who 'invented' a new firestarter that could be used commercially for controlled burns. He put potassium permangeate into ping pong balls and then some other chemical. After 45 seconds it would burst into flame, with a surprisingly jet-like envelope. They said they were fairly cheap to produce, at about 50 cents (American) each. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about chemicals yet, so I was wondering what was added to make it ignite. They seemed amazingly efficient at starting fires when dropped in a line spaced 1 meter apart. You could just put the other chemical in, tape the hole shut, and then throw it where ever you need it. Into a forest, through an open window... I imagine it'd be hard to trace as ping pong balls burn quite well. Can you say arson?

[blindreeper]

It is most likely (99.99999% sure) gylerine that was added

[metafractal]

Did it look like this: Video of Glycerine/KMnO4 reacting by Sam Barrows of Powerlabs (http://www.powerlabs.org/movies/kmno4deflag.mpg)?
From your description, as blindreeper said, it is almost definiteley KMnO4/Glycerine

[zeocrash]

yeah it's almst certainly glycerine.
i use this reaction in the trigger mechanism of my smoke grenades
also i'd imagine they would work out how the fire started pretty quickly, the pottasium permanganate leaves a black residue after it burns, plus there would also be some unreacted glycerine/KMnO3, this would give the investigators enough evidence to see how the fire started

[MrSamosa]

Doesn't KMnO4 react with many different Organic compounds to produce fires/flames and such? But it does seem like it was Glycerine that was used, judging simply from the delay time. I remember reading in the FAE thread that the reaction time between Glycerine and KMnO4 can be up to a minute long...not very instantaneous.

[Sonny Jim]

I played with it a while back and there was a delay, but not up to a minute.

[Tended Tripod]

I watched that video of the glycerin reaction, but it didn't look the same. It may have been the fact that it was venting through the open hole on the ping pong ball (it was about 1/4 in.) The flame had a very aggresive look to it, like a blow torch. Just a pointy flame shooting out of the ball about 1 to 1 1/2 in. for about 1 seconds, and then the whole ball just burst into flames. Set the area 3 in. around it in all directions fire. Like I said you could tape it shut and then just whip it somewhere. The moving around would mix the ingredients better, and after it had been on the ground for a bit, it would burst into flames.

[vulture]

Ofcourse it will produce a jet. It's a large sphere full with a pyrotechnic composition and a small hole. Very similar to a rocket.

Hmm, idea. If they would actually fly away when not restrained, they would have a rather unpredictable flying pattern. Ideal for causing mayhem...:D

[a_bab]

Tended Tripod, I've seen the same stuff in some documentary about fires in America. The firefighters are using these ping pong balls to set on fire forests in a controlled way. The liquid is antifreeze, as the glycerine is a bit more expensive.

There is a thread about this somewhere; search button is really usefull sometimes :rolleyes:

PLUS the google. Do you know what the google is ? look, an example here (http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=firefighters+ping+pong&meta=)

FIRST use your brain rather than asking and wasting other's time.

[nbk2000]

I can envision an ultralight flying through the valleys of a forest, using only the NVD amplified light of the stars to guide the pilot, with an automatic dispenser dropping hundreds of ping-pong balls over the course of many miles, setting fire to huge swaths of forest land.

Repeated often enough, by enough fedaykin, there'd be too many huge fires to fight, resulting in the destruction of the majority of the forest, with the resulting economic, social, and ecological impact being in the multi-billions to start with.

Imagine if 3/4 of americas forests was burnt to ash. What would that do to us? Probably a lot more than the loss of two buildings in New York. :)