Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: A chemical fire

I need a chemical that when it catches on fire will only burn more when water is added. And if it got on someone and they were on fire, would be resistant to Superman blowing the fire out. Also, in order to freeze the fire out of existance, the temperature Superman would have to use would kill the person burning.

(See... I don't ask for much )

Oh, right. One more thing. I need a second chemicle that can be used to put the fire out .

Now, this is New Troy and so I guess I could invent a new chemicle, but I'd rather use something we already have - assuming such a thing exists.

Thanks,

ML

ML,

Try this. Looks like it can be put out the carbone dioxide foam (chemical fire extinguisher).

Maybe other Folcs will be smarter than I am.

mmouse

How about napalm ? Particularly napalm-b.

Napalm is designed to cling to the target and keep burning, pretty much no matter what. Napalm-b is harder to ignite, but also harder to extinguish. I believe that once it starts burning, as long as any little patch is still going, the entire thing will reignite (so it would be very hard to blow out or to freeze out).

Supposedly, there are grades of napalm that will burn under water. Since it is gasoline-based, water will indeed make it burn hotter.

As for putting it out... According to this site , a chemical fire extinguisher (firefighting foam) will put it out. Another method is to smother the fire with dirt or sand. Either way, you would have to thoroughly cover the entire coated area, since anything left uncovered will continue to burn. In fact, one of the references from the first page mentions that, left unchecked, a spot of napalm will burn its way down to the bone.

Thanks, mmouse and Paul. I suspect either of those would work. I think I'll use the napalm-b though since there appears to be more information about it.

Nasty stuff. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. But I suspect it would give even Superman some problems - which is what I need for the story.

So thanks, guys.

ML (who is always amazed at the information she can get here)

Metallic sodium; flammable, releases hydrogen (which is explosive) if mixed with water, has to be stored in oil because it is reactive with the water vapour in air, and if it's mixed with water the water becomes sodium hydroxide (lye) and horribly corrosive. The kicker is that it's a MAJOR important industrial chemical, shipped everywhere in loads that can run to several hundred tons. It's used in purifying aluminum and other electrochemical jobs, and because of the low melting point it's also the coolant in some military nuclear reactors. Imagine the fun if a submarine with one of those reactors gets a cracked pipe...

Many years ago I took a safety course in which the instructor mentioned an incident in the 1950s; a ship carrying a few hundred ingots in oil had a small fire in the hold, and the captain had the crew use fire hoses to put it out. One of the drums came open, the explosion blew several more open, and so forth. Allegedly there's news film somewhere showing the drums blowing up to 100ft into the air and ingots skipping across the waves with more explosions evey time they hit the water.

On a smaller scale see some of the clips of The Sodium Party .

I should add that I've been close to an unexpected sodium explosion (or rather a series of several explosions) on one occasion, and the clips don't show just how scary the stuff can be if you're not expecting trouble.

Just an additional note on sodium - the moisture in your skin can cause it to get hot enough to burn. It's also easy to get hold of.

I was present when - as a joke - someone in a chemistry class handed a kid some metallic sodium. The kid had his hand very badly burned because the shards looked like aluminum and he didn't realize until after he put water on it that it was the metal that was burning, not just hot.

I remember that the chemistry room (which was about half a lab) in our school was once completely destroyed by metallic sodium put on water. The new teacher was supposed to practice the experiment once without students to watch it. From the instructions (loosely remembered): "Get bar of sodium out of the bottle. Cut of a piece about the size of a pea. Put sodium back into bottle. Put pea-sized piece on water." This teacher managed to get the first to steps right. Then she put the pea-sized piece back into the bottle - and the rest of the bar (3 cm in diameter, 15 cm long) in the water...

A few months later (yeah, it took that long to clean things up) we had the newest and most modern school lab in all of Solingen... Can't say that sodium is no good at all, huh?

Was the teacher OK? That big of a reaction could really hurt.