Thermite = Sweet

[Daeva]

My buddy and I recently did some "experiments"... on a hard drive that belonged to one of his clients (it contained sensitive medical records). So we decided to blow it the crap up.
We used Thermite, which is my new favorite substance on the planet. It's ignition temperature is so hot, we couldn't light it with a butane torch, we had to use a strip of magnesium as a fuse.

I haven't uploaded the video to youtube yet, but it's nowhere near as cool as this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yex063_Fblk

I am a big fan. I'm pretty sure mythbusters also did an episode on this.

I'd be interested to pour water on it (from an extremely far distance) because the thermite actually cleaves the hydrogen molecules off of the water, and as you may or may not know, hydrogen is used to launch rockets into space...) It was a fun night.

 

[superman22x]

Why would you do that to a clients harddrive? Unless they needed it destroyed I hope?

Where do you get that stuff.

 

[Daeva]

Yes, they needed it destroyed, I forgot to add that part.

It's a mixture of Aluminum and Iron Oxide. Both very simple to get, for example: your car.

Here is the wikipedia article on it, they used to have the mixture you needed to make it, but I'm sure you could probably google search it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

 

[David Lindon]

I will have to try that!