and a frying pan, because today we're doing some

kitchen chemistry. This is the type of cooking that

gets me excited because I'm trying out recipes for

solid-state rocket fuel.

To get started, I'm taking this portable electric

burner outside and away from anything flammable. I'll

add a frying pan, and set the heat to medium-low.

This lid should help it heat faster, and while that's

warming up, I'll place one of these plastic cups on a

digital scale and turn it on. When the scale has

zeroed out the weight of the cup, I'm ready to measure

portions of these two ingredients. The black bottle

is a stump remover from the garden section of a local

hardware store, and I'm using it because it contains

Potassium Nitrate. And according to the MSDS, it

contains a lot of it. The second ingredient is plain

white table sugar and I couldn't resist a little taste

before investing it into this experiment. Ok, this

recipe calls for a 60/40 mix by weight, and I'm going

to make a 100 gram batch, so I'm adding 60 grams of

stump remover first, followed by 40 grams of

granulated white sugar. That looks good there, so I'll

give the cup a little shake to mix the two together, and

then try to pour it neatly and evenly into the pre-

heated pan. Over the course of about 5 minutes, I'll

need to stir the mix up a little so it doesn't burn on

the bottom. Not much seems to be happening yet, but

after about 8 minutes I can see some of the sugar

starting to caramelize into a liquid. At this point

I'll need to be stirring and mixing a little more

frequently, and as I do, the mixture begins to liquify

and clump together, turning a golden brown. Just a

couple of minutes later, the entire batch looks like

cookie dough, and the white powder is completely mixed

in. I'll need some sort of container to hold this in,

and I'm thinking these Mega Block Legos might work.

At this point, the mixture is just runny enough that

it can be coaxed into the container. It takes about

60 grams to fill this red block, and when I've cooked

up a little more, I'll add that to the blue one. It's

darker in color because it cooked longer, and

generally speaking, I think the less it is cooked, the

better. There's just a little bit left over, and it's

hot, but if I'm careful, I can roll it into a test

piece for measuring the burn rate later on. Alright,

while those are cooling, I've got one we can light off

just to see how it looks. I'll get it started with a

propane torch, and when the fuel catches, it throws

off a nice little flame, and quite a bit of smoke.

This mix is 4 months old and seems to burn a little

slow, but it's still a good show. And you can tell by

the melting plastic that it does get pretty hot. Ok I

just made 3 more batches of fuel that are all a little

different. To the yellow one I added 30 grams of

water and then turned the heat up to boil the water

out. After a couple of minutes, the mix turned to a

white mush and was ready when all the water seemed to

have cooked out. This method prevented the sugar from

caramelizing, but was a little crumbly when dry.

I packed that into this yellow LEGO block and set it

aside. Another batch was made using a mix of 58%

Stump Remover, 29% Sugar, and this time I used 13%

Corn syrup, and 30mL water. The water was cooked out

the same way as the last, and then about 1 gram of

homemade rust powder was added, and stirred in

throughly. When it was ready, it looked like a creamy

chocolate frosting, and I packed that into the green

LEGO. I may have accidentally trapped an air bubble

inside. You'll see this explode later when we test

it. For my last batch, I sprinkled some red rust into

the mix while it was still wet, and like the others,

stirred it until the water had evaporated out. This

mix kind of looked like a delicious red velvet cake,

but I wouldn't recommend eating it. I took samples

from each fuel, and measured them all to a length of

1", then timed the burn rates to see how they

performed against each other. I was happiest with the

batch made with my homemade rust because it burned the fastest.

I had a few sample scraps left over that

were begging to be burned up, so I did that. And now

here we are with 5 samples ready for ignition.

Testing the red one, I'm really impressed at how fast

it ignites and burns, but a little nervous when it

starts spinning out of control. I'm out of there.

The blue one lights off just as powerfully, and builds

thrust to the point to where it takes off, leaving me

in a total whiteout. This yellow one was the un-

caramelized version and I got smarter this time by

pointing it down to prevent it from taking off like

the others. It burned slower than the first two, but

the amount of smoke it put off was still incredible!

Ok so this green one has the rust in it, and it lit up

instantly and then blew up. But did you notice how

much faster the burn rate was? That's amazing. For the black

one I decided it was a good idea to hold it in place

with another cement brick, and that strategy seemed to

work. At least this time I didn't get sprayed in the

face with spewing hot rocket fuel. Overall I think

I'm happiest with these mixtures using the rust. With

a different homemade casing that actually has a

nozzle, I was able to get a successful rocket launch

that I think went a couple thousand feet high.

Well that's it for this project. If you like these videos,

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I appreciate your support. Thanks for watching.