Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Rador Labs Challenge #2: Chemical Conflagrations VOTING PHASE

Rador Labs - 13-3-2015 at 22:24

Aaand the competition is finished!
Unfortunately the turnout was small, but the entries we got were all very interesting.

Now for the winner, which unlike last time will be chosen by popular vote. Attached are the three entries to the competition. Each is labeled with a letter; 'A', 'B' and 'C'. All you have to do is select the letter of your favourite picture in the poll and submit.

We would like as many votes as possible. People who submitted, AND people who did not submit are allowed to vote.

Voting is open now and will close on Saturday 28th March 0000h UTC.

After the winner has been chosen, the writeups and any extra pictures from each submission will be attached here for perusal of anyone interested.

Happy voting!

A.png - 547kB B.png - 1.3MB C.png - 456kB

j_sum1 - 13-3-2015 at 23:16

Was this supposed to be a poll?

Volanschemia - 13-3-2015 at 23:47

It's showing up as a poll to me...

j_sum1 - 14-3-2015 at 02:03

It is for me now too.
Voting neck and neck at the moment.

Amos - 14-3-2015 at 04:56

Aaaand it's neck and neck again.

Brain&Force - 14-3-2015 at 21:58

I'm interested if you can guess how each of the flames was made...I have the answers but have not looked at them yet.

Zombie - 15-3-2015 at 00:31

B) I would guess Al powder

C) Barium or Copper salts

A) Zinc

Jylliana - 15-3-2015 at 04:14

Thats why write-ups will be posted :)

Zombie - 15-3-2015 at 05:29

No doubt!

Jylliana - 21-3-2015 at 04:26

Very soft bump

Volanschemia - 26-3-2015 at 15:57

Voting finishes in just under 24 hours!
Anyone who hasn't yet voted on your favourite flame, there's not much time left. Get those votes in!

Rador Labs - 29-3-2015 at 18:57

Well, we had quite a nice turnout with the voting.
And we have a distinct winner with 15 votes on her picture!

Congratulations to Jylliana who submitted photo 'B'. You win the total prize pool of $9!

In second with 9 votes we have photo 'C' submitted by mayko and in third with 4 votes, photo 'A' submitted by zts16.

Attached are writeups done my the entrants on the details of how they created their flame and any extra photos sent to us.

zts16 will be posting his writeup himself soon.

A big thankyou to the people who entered and also to the people who voted.


Attachment: Writeup for Entry B.docx (1.6MB)
This file has been downloaded 484 times

Attachment: Writeup for Entry C.doc (7.4MB)
This file has been downloaded 9038 times

j_sum1 - 29-3-2015 at 19:35

I like this comp. Let's do it again.
(I have some ideas but just wasn't able to get involved this time around.)

Brain&Force - 29-3-2015 at 21:02

There's a new, relatively simple competition coming up next, hopefully by next month it'll be out. We may also rehash this competition later on.

Texium - 30-3-2015 at 19:47

Well, I submitted picture A. If I learned anything from participating in this competition, it is that flames are fickle, and very difficult to take still pictures of! When selecting the one that I submitted, I sorted through 26 pictures from that round of picture-taking alone. I didn't feel that any of them conveyed the way the flames actually looked, and was quite disappointed in how they turned out. Because of this, I can say that there will definitely be a possibility of having a redo of this competition come back around eventually, but with the option (or maybe requirement) to take video rather than stills! Until then, we have a few more in the pipeline that should be quite fun.

Now as for the flame...
I started with pyro grade strontium nitrate, home made copper(II) chloride, and methanol. A couple grams of each of the two salts were mixed in a mortar and pestle and ground together. Then they were added to a ceramic crucible, and methanol was poured over so that it was just barely covering the mixture. I lit it on fire and turned off the lights. It was very beautiful, with the ghostly nearly invisible methanol flame occasionally lighting up brightly with streaks of red or green, or sometimes both at the same time.

Zephyr - 30-3-2015 at 21:05

Unfortunately I didn't get around to conducting the experiment I had planned, maybe next time...
Congratulations to those who entered, nice photos!

Brain&Force - 4-4-2015 at 19:23

<iframe sandbox width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Ta-SsclaoY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

More on Jylliana's entry