"BLINKOUT" FOAM                                          1996 W. Beaty

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   WARNING: The article below describes a very dangerous experiment.
   I offer it for your information only.  Playing with stove gas  
   is very dangerous, it can start fires, cause explosions, or cause
   death by asphixiation or poisoning.  This experiment should only be
   attempted by adults who have experience with handling flammable 
   gases and who can take proper safety precautions.
   *****************************************************************

I was puttering around the basement in 1982 and thinking about helium
soap bubbles which rise.  Then it hit me: Helium Styrofoam!  Blocks of
solid matter which fall UP!  Like Rocky and Bullwinkle's "upsidaisium"
antigravity mineral.  But how to make it yourself?

As a test I considered putting an aquarium airstone in a pan of soapy
water and making helium suds.  I lacked a helium bottle, but then I
realized that my gas stove might supply lighter-than-air gas without
delay.  Dangerous, but I've worked with flammable gas before.  I used
vinyl tubing, silicone caulk, and an aquarium airstone, and a bowl of
soapy water to create a small amount of stove-gas-suds. Did it rise?  No.
Rochester NY stove gas is only slightly lighter than air, nothing at all
like helium.  How flammable was it?  It was small, so I ignited it, and
THE ENTIRE FOAM BLOB SILENTLY DISSAPPEARED INSTANTLY!

Cool.  Not the slightest tiny bubble was left.  The water in the soapfilms
must vaporize during the combustion, and the bubbles have little oxygen
initially.  One or the other of these slows the flame front enough that no
shockwave or explosive sound is produced.  Yet the flame front moves so
fast that the entire white foam blob winked out of existence.

I then made a blob of dangerous suds about a gallon in volume (outdoors
for safety), and sure enough, when touched off with a lighter, the entire
mass winks out of existance with a soft "puff" sound.  Hey, if a complex
3D sculpture was made from gas-filled, long lasting gelatine-based foam,
when exposed to a combustion source it would blink out of existence like a
Star Trek effect!

Not everyone has a gas stove, so I got out the propane torch to make some
flammable foam with an alternative gas source.  Ooops.  Doesn't work. 
When lit, the burning foam produced five foot leaping orange flames which
could char the ceiling.  Acts less like foam and more like gasoline. 
Darn.  I guess stove gas is required.  I haven't tried hydrogen or
acetylene, so I don't know if they will create blink-out foam, or will
simply explode with a bang.  Now that I'm writing this, I realized that I
never got around to trying to make helium foam!

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