How To: Launch a cork rocket using an LED

OK, this should make up for the intestinal worm.

In this video, you'll learn how to use an ultraviolet LED to kickstart a chemical reaction capable of sending a cork flying halfway across a lecture hall. It's a hazardous science demonstration! Hooray!

Quick note: The sound quality gets a little sketchy at times. If you click on the CC option in the lower-right corner of the player window you'll be able to read the English subtitles.

Video Link

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: chemistry • dangerous • DIY • experiment • explosions • Science • unicorn chaser • video

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Ashen Victor

Great! Now they will ban ultraviolet light from planes!
- Chevan
  
  And our supplies of chlorine gas!
pizzicato

How does this work again?

Say if I pass a current through salt water with 2 pencil rod, add ultraviolet light = kaboom?
http://www.facebook.com/harrkev Kevin Harrelson

They recorded the reaction using a 480-FPS camera. It *looked like* a simple point-and-shoot. Does anybody know what model this was? If it is affordable, I have to get me one of those.
- Takashi Omoto
  
  Casio has a set of P&S that record high-speed video at the expense of a much smaller resolution. I’m not sure but the one of the video is probably a EX-ZR10:
  http://exilim.casio.com/digital_cameras/High-Speed/EX-ZR10
  
  They aren’t what I’d call “cheap” but they’re good value if you have a need for High-Speed.
- Genius Musings
  
  Maybe this one? $239.99
  http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-TL350-Optical-Digital-Camera/dp/B0036RDP9C
  
  http://www.samsung.com/us/photography/digital-cameras/EC-TL350ZBPBUS-features
  Movie Size:1920×1080 High/Standard Quality, 1280×720 Standard Quality, 640×480, 320×240, 432×320, 224×160, 192×64,* Speed Dial (1000 fps, 420fps, 240 fps, 60fps, 30fps, 10sec(timer), 2sec(timer)),* Format:H.264 (Max. Recording time:20min.),* Stereo recording with volume control, mute during zoom operation (user option),* Voice(On/Off), OIS(On/Off),* Movie capture button,* Smart Auto Movie (Landscape, Blue Sky, Natural Green, Sunset),Full-size Dual Capture
Donald Petersen

I remember learning about this reaction as a kid. A balloon, filled with hydrogen gas and chlorine gas. Then you light a strip of magnesium some distance away (or generate sufficient UV light some other way), and ka-blammo. What I always wondered (any chemists out there know?) was whether you’d end up with a rain of HCl acid when the balloon burst, ’cause if so, what a naughty thing to bring to a birthday party.

Be an interesting way to take out one of the guards at a movie villain’s HQ, however.
http://twitter.com/zamdata Sam Data

Hmmm… Take the test tube with you camping, set it up when you fall asleep, first rays of dawn… perfect alarm clock!
Brewer_ME

No, Maggie- this did not make up for your worm video. It’s going to take more than things popping out of cylinders to … oh wait GAH!
knoxblox

Oh, a CORK rocket…

So much cooler than a grape/potato gun, IHMO.