Halloween alert!
Calling all pixies. You may want to toss a little fairy dust around, to cast a spell on your friends this Halloween. But if you use powdered milk, flour, cornstarch, sugar or cocoa, keep your tricks well away from the candle in the pumpkin. These dusts can explode!
For such a thing to happen, you need a large dust cloud in a confined space, air, and a spark. So you won’t likely set off any smoke detectors in your kitchen. But the food industry has to take care. Combustible sugar dust was the fuel for a terrible explosion and fire that occurred in 2008, at the Imperial Sugar Company in Georgia.
Some students in Germany decided to try a little experiment with powered milk and fire. Watch this video to see the calories in milk powder actually burn burn burn. Scary! Don’t try it yourself.
With Halloween just around the corner, Vinny says, “This experiment with exploding milk powder shows just how much energy there is in the food we eat. Have fun and stay safe this Halloween. To power your way through your whole neighborhood tonight, eat your sugar, don’t throw it!”
Many thanks to Marti of Fact or Fiction for posting Exploding fairy dust. Check out her site for more amazing truths.
Photo compliments of http://www.christmas-graphics-plus.com/free/animated-fairies.html
Nov 02, 2011 @ 17:59:34
Just saw this on Chris Cooper’s site. It’s a bacon torch. Watch it burn! http://www.popsci.com/bacon#comment-123929
This great picture shows the tremendous energy we tap into as food burns in our bodies.
When we burn calories during exercise, that’s just what we’re doing. Go for the burn!