From: SFPhysics@aol.com
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 00:16:20 PST
From: SFPhysics@aol.com Message-ID: <99.31937491.2b5672d4@aol.com> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 03:16:20 EST Subject: Source of Smoke...
Smoke?
Assuming I could get the ingredients, would that be safe? The book was
written in
> the all-too-fun, but unenlightened days of the 60's.
> Thanks,
> Lou Morton
> St. Francis Solano School, Sonoma
>
Greetings Lou:
Around Halloween Target Stores sold a very inexpensive spooky fog machine for
special effects. It generates a lot of smoke using a "reasonably" safe
mixture of water and a soluble ingredient that varies from glycerin to
ethylene glycol. Various party stores carry the "fog juice" for the machines
at about $10 for a pint that will last in the machine from over 8 hours. The
machine works by heating a chamber up to a high temperature then a small
amount of "fog juice" is injected with an electrical pump. From an orifice
on the front of the unit comes great amounts of smoke (fog) which in moderate
amounts is not very toxic. I wouldn't want to breath it but actors and
stagehands breathing it for years in theatres seem not to have suffered much
from exposure. I bought my machine for $15 on the day after Halloween sale
and the fog juice was just $2. Unfortunately Target does not carry the unit
any other time of the year. The output of the unit is hot but can be
collected to cool inside a large cardboard box then be pushed out with a
muffin fan to the soda straw that will deliver a parallel smoke jet to the
wing surface. Full price fog units are available at any good party store and
they may even be rented from the local party rental store. Fog machines can
also be found in various catalogues such as Edmund Scientific (high prices)
and Things You Never Knew Existed (moderate prices).
Have fun with Physics,
Al Sefl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Aug 04 2003 - 16:18:11 PDT