Magnesium: DOW 2410

Man, would that be the bonfire from Hell, or what. I can see the headlines now.... AIRLINE PILOTS BLINDED BY....

I think I wrote here before about blowing out the 2" flare line with argon. The line was plugging off with mag powder and CO. Security called us on that one. Bright white light streamed through the window slit in the door for a couple seconds. They told us we lit up the south half of the county. Luckily it was about 3AM, so we didn't fry a bunch of eyes.

Pete

A match on a chunk of magnesium won't do much, nor will striking an arc. We only got the approximately 1 1/2 dia X 3/8 chunk to ignite when it was set on top of the gas burner on the stove and I disassembled my ball point pen to make a blow pipe. Once it ignited, it produced a very bright flame and copious amounts of acrid smoke.

It melted, and the flaming molten magnesium burned a hole through the aluminum gas burner. We were able to scoop up the molten glob with a spoon and deposit it into the garden soil.

Don't try this at home.

Already did that. Just to a couple fo shavings I took off one edge with my SAK.

Yes, they burned brightly. I just want to be sure it doesn't have something really nasty like : beryllium in it.

Aluminum may or may not work depending on the pH. It is amphiprotic which is sort of the metalurgical analog to being bisexual.

Richard J Kinch fired this volley in news:Xns99FB87CC4A6F6someconundrum@216.196.97.131:

It's interesting - no, amusing - that you ask. My nose "shadowed" the right side of my face, and my UVA/B glasses shadowed my "goggle area". Burns all over the light-side, but no burns in the shadows.

LLoyd

Anthony W fired this volley in news:kGY4j.5798$gs.1516@trndny08:

Those are actually "Elektron alloy", a Mg/Al solution.

LLoyd

innews:kGY4j.5798$gs.1516@trndny08:

No surprise since few auto parts, or for that matter machine parts, or for that matter almost anything where strength and stiffness matter, are made from pure metals.

Do you know what the composition is? I'll bet there's some copper in there too. But it wouldn't surprise me if it's 90% + Mg.

Fred the Red Shirt fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@j20g2000hsi.googlegroups.com:

"Elektron" is a range of alloys, as in:

innews: snipped-for-privacy@j20g2000hsi.googlegroups.com:

Thanks.

If I read that table correctly, it looks like they are all 90%+ Mg. My guess would be that most would burn fiercely, though none would be easy to ignite with a particle size on the order of an engine case.

FWIW, Great Plains offers their aircraft engines in either Aluminum or Magnesium, presumably alloys of course, and says that the Aluminum engines are 14lbs heavier.