Randall Young sez:
>The issue is that magnesium is a pretty good conductor of heat, so ...
So what you need for ready ignition of the magnesium is a large
surface-area-to-volume ratio. That's why firecrackers and sparklers
contain *finely divided* magnesium or aluminum powder. (I used to work
making very-high-efficiecy polymerization catalysts. The trick was to get
the surface area way up.)
Remember those one-use "flash bulbs" that we used ages ago for indoor
photography? The bulb contained a bunch of very fine magnesium wool.
When it went off... bright light!
>Anyone want to donate a mag wheel...
I want to watch! To get it going, cut up some of it into fine pieces.
WOOHOO!
Lee M. Daniels Laboratory for Molecular Structure and Bonding
triumph@tamu.edu Texas A&M University
'74 TR6 '88 XJ6 http://acs.tamu.edu/~lmd1191
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