The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
I’d never heard about the reaction between Coca-Cola and lighter fuel. Now, thanks to a zany Russian creative artist, I no longer have to live in ignorance.
I’m tempted to try that at our Blogorado gun-blogger gathering in October. “Pull!”
Peter
The liquid butane has a lower density than the cola so it stays on top and is evaporating into a gas quickly. When rotated most of the liquid butane switches places with the cola, causing the cola to be forced out of the open part of the bottle like a propellant in a rocket as the liquid butane continues to evaporate.
The failure of the container is similar to a phenomenon known as a BLEVE.
Kewl! Film at 10:00?!?!?!
Might want to add directional fins…..
Put the coke bottle inside a paper mailing tube which will provide launch guidance when inverted.
According to a guy on reddit it works thusly —
Coca-Cola is filled with dissolved CO2. The CO2 can escape (creating gas) if the partial pressure of CO2 is too low next the liquid. That’s why Coke goes flat if you leave it exposed to air.
Next we have butane, which is a nonpolar liquid at low temperatures, but boils at about 0 Celsius. When you add a bunch of butane to the coke bottle, it probably starts to form a liquid on top of the coke (it won’t mix), which causes water ice to form, which acts as an insulator.
Now, you flip the bottle. Not only does the liquid butane come into contact with warm coke, which causes it to boil, creating butane gas… but the newly gaseous butane doesn’t contain any CO2. That causes CO2 to rush into the new butane bubbles and expand even more.
The end result: a bunch of new butane gas and CO2 gas, also known as an explosion.