When I first moved into my current place the stove was really old. It had rusty eyes that barely even worked, etc. One day I'm making some mashed potatoes in a sauce pan when suddenly I'm treated with a fireworks show. First a white flash, then a giant plume of sparks and smoke goes 5 feet into the air. I frantically turn off the eye, and open the windows. When I come back, I try to remove the pot and it's fused to the eye as if it had been arc welded! There is a hole burned right through the bottom of the pot, and near the point of the "explosion" both the pot and the eye are still in a molten state! Until now I've had no idea, at all, how this could have happened. The pot is anodized aluminum, and the eye is steel... Both of which have melting points well over a thousand degrees. The amount of energy necessary to bring them to a molten state in a matter of a few seconds is enormous. There was no way it could have been the heat from the eye... Even if there had been a short, or electrical problem I just don't see how it's conceivable that that much heat could have been generated by any current produced by a 220v wall outlet pbutting into an aluminum pot that isn't even grounded! So how in the world could have this have happened?
Well, today I'm watching the history channel and they discuss a dated technology used in WWII called "Thermite Grenades". Instead of creating an explosion they are designed to generate a great deal of heat (upwards of 4000 degrees F) to sabotage machinery and what not without any sound. I think, "woah, that's cool.". Then they show a demonstration of these grenades in action and I happen to notice it looks exactly like the reaction that occurred on my stove! Weird... molten sparks, thick grey smoke, fused metal, the whole bit. But I didn't really put two and two together until they began to explain how these grenades work.
"A thermite reaction (a type of aluminothermic reaction) is one in which *aluminum metal* is oxidized by the oxide of another metal, most commonly *iron oxide*."
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Apparently, you can also create a thermite reaction with:
1) An non-stick anodized aluminum pot with aluminum exposed on the bottom. 2) A rusty stove eye (rust is also known as... iron oxide). 3) Heat from the eye.
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Grreeattt... Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I'm going to take a picture of the pot, it's pretty impressive. I wonder if there is way to determine how hot it actually got by examining it.
Eric
(ps: yes I scraped the remaining potatoes out of the pot and ate them... Mmmm... potatoes.)
