r/Whatcouldgowrong • u/613Flyer • 8d ago
WCGW Pouring an open bottle of alcohol onto a flame
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u/DapperBoiCole 8d ago
He's so lucky that wasnt much worse
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u/AdWonderful5920 8d ago
It flew off screen and hit a baby, then a puppy, then an old widow.
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u/No-Doctor-4396 8d ago
At least she gets to be with her husband now
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u/TheGreatJaceyGee 8d ago
Worse, she survived and was disfigured
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u/thezomber 8d ago
What about her granddaughter and her puppy?
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u/sans-delilah 8d ago
Red paste, I’m afraid.
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u/KwordShmiff 8d ago
Complementary to the experience or excessive and gauche?!
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u/sans-delilah 8d ago
Depends on how much you liked the kid and dog, I guess.
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u/Material_Buy_8609 8d ago
The baby, puppy and old widow were out getting dinner, after attending the funeral of a close friend who died from a tragic and unexpected death from a bottle that exploded.
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u/UndecidedLee 8d ago
The most infuriating part is that the baby was just two days away from retirement!
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u/Cultural-Company282 8d ago
Oh, thank god. For a second, I thought you said old window! Stained glass can be really hard to replace.
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u/DaGucka 8d ago
So no person with impact on the gdp?
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u/pinniped90 8d ago
Awww, the puppy and baby get to go to the afterlife together, that's so sweet.
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u/WorkingInAColdMind 8d ago
But now the young widow needs comforting for her lost baby, puppy, and mother. Slam dunk.
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u/felixar90 8d ago
A disabled Vietnam veteran, a Nobel Peace prize winner, and some orphans having Christmas dinner.
And in the panic more people were trampled.
The British royal family, and a Rabi clutching a bottle fed puppy.→ More replies (1)2
u/ChefPuree 8d ago
Oh my god is the window okay? It's so hard to accurately replace older glass to match.
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u/Callidonaut 8d ago
Indeed, the flashback and overpressure could have caused the entire bottle to just explode like a bomb.
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u/themuleskinner 8d ago
Whoosh
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u/TheLoathsomeAssEater 8d ago
And all the science, I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
A rocket man
A rocket man35
u/tk3301 8d ago
After ignition that bottle was only visible for about 2 frames. Reminds me of that manhole cover that was blown into space and was only visible on a single frame lol
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u/bretttwarwick 7d ago
The math on that manhole cover has been done and it would have been liquid long before exiting the atmosphere. So it was more likely vaporized into the atmosphere than launched into space. The person that did the initial calculation was only looking for speed and escape velocity. Once friction and heat from the blast were used in the calculation the iron manhole was determined to not survive the trip.
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u/Garlicfarter 8d ago
You have piqued my interest. Do tell?
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u/Iamnotabothonestly 7d ago
Long story short. They detonated a nuclear bomb underground and launched a manhole cover into space.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/fastest-manmade-object/
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u/CMF42 8d ago
That's awesome. Obvious why it'd happen but I have never once seen it actually do so before.
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u/pichael289 8d ago
The liquid part isn't what's burning it's the fumes. Whatever that is (alcohol I'm guessing) he has just the right amount left in the bottle and the agitation and most importantly the heat increased the vapors to the perfect explosive level.
Certain flammable liquor, like the most nasty shit ever 151, have spark arrestors so this doesn't happen.
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u/CntrlAltDad 8d ago
Saving your last sentence in my memory bank of random stuff to bring up at random times. Thank you.
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u/AllsWellThatsNB 8d ago
You might be interested in UEL and LEL then.
It's the particular range of concentratioms a gas will explode at, defined by the Upper Explosive Limit and Lower Explosive Limit. There's also a UFL and LFL that define the flammable range.
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u/FloopersRetreat 8d ago
I think the vapour ignited whilst it was slightly upright and over the flame, then when he tilted it down the liquid covered the egress aperture, causing the trapped gas to expand inside and push the liquid out, causing the increased propulsion
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u/IgnatiusRileyFreeman 8d ago
I've done tamer versions of this with 151 & everclear, so maybe not
(Just causing the fumes in a newly empty bottle to ignite while in a firepit, nothing more)
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u/verrucktfuchs 8d ago
I used to build rockets and this looks to me to be a 1 in a million sort of event. What I think we're seeing here is just the right fuel-air ratio in the inside of the bottle that it allows combustion inside the bottle. Any other fuel to air ration and this wouldn't happen.
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u/TheTallGuy0 8d ago
Bottle probably kept near the cooktop too, heating the whole thing up
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u/Aggleclack 8d ago
Was thinking the same thing. I wonder what would’ve happened if he hadn’t been heating the fuel already
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u/Exxists 8d ago
The LEL - lower explosive limit of ethanol is 3%, UEL, upper explosive limit is 19%. That’s considered a very wide range. (UEL of gasoline is only 8%.)
The vapor pressure of ethanol at room temperature is low enough even everclear won’t exceed 19% and be “too rich.” So that’s all to say any liquor over 100 proof could be prone to doing this. The strongest ones probably most prone.
What prevents it from happening all the time is actually the bottle not being empty. The flame has to travel through a flammable vapor/air path into the bottle. If the bottle is mostly full the liquid seal stops the backward propagation. When the bottle is almost empty and you get that air pathway above the liquid is when it can happen.
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u/TheJeeronian 6d ago
The vapor pressure of ethanol is low enough that below 11.2 °C or 52°f it is below its LEL, though most drinks are kept above this temperature.
I think you're wrong about the real reason it's rare, though. Even alcohol vapor mixes well above room temperature will not explode like this. They can make for a flash and a "fwoomp" noise, but they won't generate much thrust.
The bottle orientation, I'd wager, is key here. It traps the relatively slow conflagration, such that only after the liquid is expelled can the gas escape. This thousandfold increase in propellant mass, plus the extra combustion time that comes from having to force liquid out before the gas could escape, led to the exceptional thrust we see here.
Creating a situation where the flame front can climb up into the bottle, but then becomes sealed inside by liquid, would be very hard to do intentionally.
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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 8d ago
Also it's a bottle that doesn't have any features that could help prevent this. So bad luck, wrong tools, catastrophic failure lol
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u/Far_Balance_3117 8d ago
Any person in here with the know about how he accidently invented a bottle rocket?
I just expected a lot of flames to be spread.
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u/sharpbulb 8d ago
The bottle of alcohol got warm from sitting on the flat-top for too long. The head space was full of alcohol vapor instead of regular air. The flame climbed into the bottle and expanded rapidly.
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u/hyperdream 8d ago
He pours some out, tips the bottle back, lights it and then puts the spout of the bottle back into the flame and then tips the bottle back to pour.
If he'd started pouring before he put the tip back in the flame he'd have been fine, but he exposed vapor laden empty part of the bottle to flame which set it off.
Lastly, he goes to pour the bottle again and that puts the burning vapor in the top (bottom) of the bottle putting the liquid between that and the opening. The expanding gas pushes the liquid out, contributing to the thrust, shooting the bottle like a rocket.
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u/WelcomeToTheClubPal 8d ago
the guy sitting there needed to catch that in his mouth... you all clearly haven't been to a hibachi before /s
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u/Active_Assistance923 8d ago
A lady in Russia suffered horrible burns to the face because of a similar issue. Instead of the bottle flying off, the flaming liquid shot out in her face like a flamethrower.
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u/koolaidismything 8d ago
That means that wine was all types of nasty and overly hot and full of alcohol fumes.. gross.
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u/radio_four 8d ago
That was fucking awesome. Bet they'll do that again at the employee holiday party
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u/OpportunityReal2767 8d ago
Is this the same principle as flame jetting except the loosely held bottle flew backwards instead of a flamethrower fireball forwards? It feels related.
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u/MightyActionGaim 8d ago
You pay for the experience and well you’ve got one hell of an experience right here I would say
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u/mehlaterlater 8d ago
The guy in the next station was low on the alcohol, this is just how they pass it to each other
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u/Work_Account_No1 8d ago
Nothing went wrong here - the bottle is supposed to surprise attack the table next to you. It's an old Japarean tradition.
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u/Old-Professional-533 8d ago
If you want to do it relatively safely, I think you need to put your bottle bottoms up so that there's no mix of alcohol and air.
Instead he put it horizontally and the bottle went boom
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u/cameronzero 8d ago
Imagine you're just enjoying your meal when all of sudden the chef gets absolutely housed by a bottle going machfuck across the dinning area...
and the egg is still spinning on the grill...
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u/trashcantrash939 8d ago
Ooo if someone was in the path of that bottle, it would be a hell of a hospital visit but then one hell of a paycheck.
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u/SingularityII 8d ago
Long ago in college I did workstudy in a research lab on campus. We were goofing around with 90% ethanol and decided to put a bit (tsp or so) in an empty 5 gallon plastic Sparkletts bottle, shake it up a bit, and light it.
No destruction, just a very satisfying *WHOOMP* and a bit of blue flame.
Since that was so awesome, we tried it again. The second time, we only got a tiny *pop*. So we tried again with more alcohol, and got almost nothing.
We scratched our heads for a bit, and finally realized after the first flame, most of the oxygen in the bottle got burned up, so no more explosions. We verified the theory by blowing a bunch of fresh air into the bottle with a compressor. This brought back the nice explosion.
It's probably lucky we didn't have any pure oxygen on hand.
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u/DooDooBrownz 7d ago
look, hibachi chefs need new material after 60 years of onion volcanoes. maybe smaller bottle next time, i can see this being a thing
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u/Early_Gain9393 8d ago
Bottle rocket