Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 August 21

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 21

Hydrocolloid techology (plaster)

Please check if the chemistry behind Compeed plaster is properly described in Techology part. I was using sources like patents, Compeed description at Expainthatstuff article]) as well as Amazon ingredients data. -- TigerInWoods — Preceding undated comment added 03:33, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Explosive gel/foam

In some video games, like Batman Arkham Asylum, they have a gel or foam that comes out of an aerosol can that you can use to blow stuff up. Does something like this exist IRL? 69.121.131.137 (talk) 03:37, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

You can buy aerosol cans of shaving foam and Polystyrene foam (Styrofoam). The latter solidifies and is useful for filling cavities in house walls and lifeboats, is ubiquitous in litter such as packing peanuts and disposable coffee cups, but is hardly explosive enough to impress the batty rogues of Gotham City. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 13:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Does the foam go out an explode on its own, or is it more like spray the foam, then ignite to start an explosion? For instance, If you were to take a can of the spray Polystyrene mentioned above, and mix it with gasoline, you'd get a version of napalm. Not really explosive, but I can see Batman spraying napalm on a bad guy then throwing a match to light it. Vaguely similar real-world weapons are the Greek_Fire and Flame_fougasse, but they are both more firey than explosive. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:34, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, if you could get the foam to have the right ratio of oxygen and fuel, and little else, you might be able to create a sort of thermobaric weapon, although this one would have it's own 100% oxygen inside the bubbles, and not rely on atmospheric oxygen. The bubble material would be the fuel. I suspect you'd get more of an explosion this way than if the foam was all fuel and needed oxygen from the air. That would only burn at the edges, not explode, since air is only 21% oxygen. StuRat (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

While not foamy, C-4 is malleable. I always assumed Batman used something a little more advanced, but similar. --Wirbelwind(ヴィルヴェルヴィント) 23:28, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I wonder what would the effect would be of mixing RDX with a polyurethane spray foam? Plasmic Physics (talk) 01:15, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

♣ 84.209.89.214 (talk) 12:27, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Does a red playing card club mean "don't try this at home" ? StuRat (talk) 13:12, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

It fits this profile. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 22:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)