Making fire with compressed air?  Sounds crazy, but that’s exactly what a fire piston does!

In this video Peter demonstrates this simple piece of kit and explains how it works.

Fancy a thermite demo in your school hall?  Or maybe sodium and water?  Our new armoured cabinet with built in fume extraction and a 20 metre extraction duct is perfect for any occasion when you just absolutely have to have a demo that produces hot, molten/burning metal.

We’re planning a longer video on cryogenic rocket propellants at some point in the future so thought that we’d practice a demo igniting less than 20 ml of a mixture of liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid propane.  Liquid propane isn’t cryogenic and isn’t used as a rocket fuel but, in the absence of liquid hydrogen or liquid methane, it shows the impressive energy density of liquid propellants!

Why is liquid oxygen used as a rocket propellant?  Peter looks at its paramagnetic properties and how you can use it to incinerate your breakfast cereal.

I’m sure that we all feel under a bit of pressure from time to time but did you know that the air around you is constantly exerting a massive 10.1 Newtons of force on every square centimetre of your body?  That’s equivalent to a bag of sugar (in the UK) pressing on every square centimetre of your body, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

So how come we aren’t all squashed flat?

It’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot – a teaspoon that melts at 29 Celsius.

Need a shower in a hurry?  Why not use ours?  It’s powered by a hydrogen-oxygen explosion for when you need to be refreshed quickly.

We may not be able to come to you at the moment but our amazing online shows mean that you can come to us instead via the magic of the interweb!

Our hydrogen/oxygen balloon finale from the Abu Dhabi Science Festival back in January 2020.

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