* STUPID ideas and clever inventions you tried when younger......

[Craig 930 RS]

How about things you did as a boy that 'don't seem so smart now'?

Buy a 2 liter bottle of diet coke. Add a bunch of Certs. Fountain!

OR

Empty 2 liter bottle. Add water. Add dry ice. Cap. Run far, far away. Result? MAJOR, massive, explosion.

This.....can kill you.

[Craig 930 RS]

Hey just found out there are other idiots that have done the same thing:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6370557019451247183

[deathpunk dan]

At age 15, I was dumb enough to liberate some magnesium from the chemistry lab at school. I covered the strips of magnesium in tin foil strips, filled a 16 oz pepsi bottle halfway with muriatic acid, and dropped in the metals, shook it up, and threw it.

After one explosion, the town arson investigator, who was a neighbor and my best friend's dad, came and got me.

I never did anything that dumb ever again.

[Craig 930 RS]

2 liters work the best:
http://www.stupidvideos.com/video/stunts/fire_explosions/Dry_Ice_Explosion/

[singpilot]

We lived close to a major north-south train track. Pennies on the rails..... used to lose one or two of them every time the train went by. But we got them back the size of a half-dollar.

Then we found one of them imbedded in a concrete abutment close by. I mean buried. Hmmm. Glad it didn't go thru us on the way to being buried in that concrete.

[dhoward]

One old-time dry-cleaning bag.
One old-time quart soda bottle.
One tablespoon Lye.
10 rolled up balls of aluminum foil.
Add water.
Instant (Well, sort of) Hindenberg.
Do not, repeat NOT, perform this experiment in your basement with your younger brother whom your are supposed to be baby-sitting, while your parents are at the corner bar...

Do NOT, attempt to recreate the histoic event, by flipping a lit match on top of the bag.


Being scared is fun!

[Craig 930 RS]

I put an Eisenhower dollar on the tracks when I was a kid..........wrapped around the rails, wouldn't come off......

[bryanthompson]

When I was in first grade a bunch of friends and I thought it would be a good idea to get up on our roof with garbage bags... plus an extension cord attached to a hair dryer. You can see where this is going, i'm sure. We basically thought we could use the hair dryer to fill the bags with hot air and float gently to the ground. How we didn't break any limbs, I don't know.

Anyone else try various flying machines? I remember cardboard wings, experiments with bikes with wings, etc.

[singpilot]

Dry cleaners bag. two balsa strips, 3 feet long each. Tape the bag closed at the top. Tape the balsa strips to the open bottom of the bag in a crossed X. Put birthday candles all along the balsa strips. Light them, wait for bag to fill with heat. Launch bag from schoolyard across the street. Laugh your a$$ off as bag rises to unbelievable heights.

Stop laughing when evening arriving Hughes Air Worst flight does acrobatic manuever to avoid UFO. Makes news next day. Two pilots suspended pending investigation. Wake from airliner rustled bag, plastic catches fire and melts, all evidence consumed on fall to earth.

Decided to become a dentist. Plans fell thru when, in college, I saw under a microscope what germs a college coed had in her mouth. Knowing where that mouth had been recently.

Took up flying for a living, thinking I was one step ahead of everyone else, knowing that there are not really any UFO's out there.

[cantdrv55]

I bought XRay glasses from a magazine ad and wore them at school during recess. Poor investment for spying but I made a lot of friends that day because they wanted wanted to try it out!

[Drago]

Most of mine involved gasoline, green plastic army men, dog *****, neighbors lawns, a '78 Ford Country Squire station wagon (two trannies, one engine), old car and airplane models, BMX bikes and jump ramps, WD-40, kerosene, an '84 VW Cabriolet w/ a fantastic e-brake (sorry Mom), BB guns, BIC lighters, 40 oz. bottles of Olde English (hey teener!), toilet paper, sweaty Marlboro Red's stored in my velcro wallet (thanks Dad!), quarters (the game), a chemistry set, metal garbage can lids, 4 packs of Bartles and James, a Nerf football, and pool acid.

Not necessarily in that order.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Model rockets with small baggies filled with the incindiary of your choice (gasoline, gunpowder, whatever) above the engine so that when the "parachute charge" goes off (normally pushes the nose cone off & deploys the chute) it results in ignition of the incindiary material.

Side note: When using gasoline-filled baggies in this manner, make sure the engine selected for the rocket is powerful enough to get the rocket HIGH in the air. Gas is heavy and an underpowered engine MIGHT possibly result in a low-altitude explosion replete with burning gasoline/napalm raining down on the launchers' heads causing them to run for cover as the field they're standing on catches fire. . . Just maybe.

[RickM]

M80 in a big glass soda bottle. As my friend and I were running away the glass was showering us.

[elwood-914]

Took tail light lamps and took a wet stone and ground a hole into it.......filled it up with gun powder and glued it closed......plugged it back in.

[Tim Hancock]

Originally posted by bryanthompson
When I was in first grade a bunch of friends and I thought it would be a good idea to get up on our roof with garbage bags... plus an extension cord attached to a hair dryer. You can see where this is going, i'm sure. We basically thought we could use the hair dryer to fill the bags with hot air and float gently to the ground. How we didn't break any limbs, I don't know.

Anyone else try various flying machines? I remember cardboard wings, experiments with bikes with wings, etc.

When I was 5 or 6, I remember sliding a 1" x 6" x 3' long board between the top tube and the twin sloping tubes of my candy apple red Schwinn stingray bicycle and riding down our street as fast as possible (with my legs scraping into the wood board)hoping to get airborn.

Later when 10 or so, I wrapped heavy electrical wire around my back tire of my Honda Z-50 to act as "snow chains". That worked, however my red plastic K-tel funski strapped to the front tire.... not so much. I had wrapped more wire around the front brake lever to keep the wheel from turning, but I never went much farther than the driveway, before the straps on the ski would loosen or the ski would flex and slip.

As a teen, we succesfully made pipe bombs and proceded to do lots of damage with them. Also as a teen, a friend got a Honda Odessey (go-cart styled off road buggy for you young-uns). I just had to have one, so I built one out of pipe and galvanised conduit using a buddies stick welder (not a pretty site). I borrowed the engine out of my old ATC 90 and used wheels from it and a parts bike I had.

A year later I cannibalized my old XR75 dirt bike and turned it into a three wheeler with small "flat-tracker" tires commandeered from an old lawnmower. Too bad my mild steel axel I rigged up was not up to the forces imposed on it from jumping dirt piles!

Around that time I made a tow dolly to hook my BMX bike up to the back of my dirt bike to haul it back and forth to a friend's house. It flipped over on the road once while taking a corner a bit too fast!

I can think of a few other stupid things that I do not care to reveal.

[bryanthompson]

elwood - I used to make ignitors for theater explosions out of christmas lights that exact same way.

[deathpunk dan]

Age 16: a friend watching me lapping my motocross practice track decides to take his grandparents PRISTINE 82 Rabbit on the track. 1st jump was the last jump.

[greglepore]

Potato cannon made of soda cans (back when they were steel) with a load of a gas soaked tennis ball-great fun.

[Jared at Pelican Parts]

Estes "D" model rockets engines duct taped to roller skates
Liquid Plumber and aluminum foil in a 2L bottle (Dont do that)
putting NO2 on a Honda mini trail 70 (lasted about 10 seconds til it siezed)
cut the roof off my POS VW Rabbit Diesel ala the 80's classic "Thrashin"
Home made "tazer" out of a photo flash unit
gasoline and styrofoam, soap chips, etc...
Turned a 1970 Buick 4 door into a 2 door with a welder and friends

just a short list

[juanbenae]

Originally posted by bryanthompson
When I was in first grade a bunch of friends and I thought it would be a good idea to get up on our roof with garbage bags... plus an extension cord attached to a hair dryer. You can see where this is going, i'm sure. We basically thought we could use the hair dryer to fill the bags with hot air and float gently to the ground. How we didn't break any limbs, I don't know.

Anyone else try various flying machines? I remember cardboard wings, experiments with bikes with wings, etc.

it all makes ense now!! i figured it was a blow to the head, now i am convinced.