Monday, April 22, 2013

The Wonder That Is Bacon: The Other White Heat

From Popular Science:

You know bacon is delicious, but did you know it contains enough energy to melt metal?  

Grease Fire Pure oxygen flows from a metal pipe through a core of baked prosciutto, generating a grease fire hot enough to ignite steel and burn a hole clear through this pan. A wrapping of less-flammable uncooked prosciutto focuses the flame into an intense bacon-plasma torch Mike Walker
I recently committed myself to the goal, before the weekend was out, of creating a device entirely from bacon and using it to cut a steel pan in half. My initial attempts were failures, but I knew success was within reach when I was able to ignite and melt the pan using seven beef sticks and a cucumber.

No, seriously. The device I built was a form of thermal lance. A thermal lance, typically made of iron instead of bacon, is used to cut up scrap metal and rescue people from collapsed buildings. It works by blowing pure oxygen gas through a pipe packed with iron and magnesium rods. These metals are surprisingly flammable in pure oxygen, releasing a huge amount of heat as they are consumed. The result is a jet of superheated iron plasma coming out of the end of the pipe. For sheer destructive force, few tools match a thermal lance. But iron isn't the only thing that's flammable in a stream of pure oxygen.
Meat Sticks: The author wrapped slices of prosciutto around fiberglass rods, 
baked them dry, and bundled seven tubes into a bacon fuel core  Mike Walker
Bacon is fattening because it contains a lot of chemical energy tied up in its proteins, and especially in its fat. You can release that energy either by digesting it or by burning it with a healthy supply of oxygen. The challenge isn't creating the heat; it's engineering a bacon structure strong enough to withstand the stress of a 5,000°F bacon plasma flame.

I used prosciutto (Italian for "expensive bacon") because it is a superior engineering grade of meat....MORE