The Match-Head Bomb

On another occasion when we lived in the flat-roofed house, Tom and I were home alone and itching for some mischief. We set up a card table in the living room to serve as our chemistry lab. I cut the heads off of a bunch of common matches and put them into a small glass Christmas ornament. It was the kind that you hang on the tree with a little wire hook. We simply removed the little wire loop and the thingy that covered the hole in the glass globe so we could fill the inside of the ball with the match heads. I didn't have any real goal with this dangerous stunt, so I started doing some crazy stupid experimenting with this little bomb. We had a candle mounted on a small plate that was on the card table. I lit the candle and held the phosphorous filled ball with my bare hand. I can't imagine what ever came over me to do such a crazy thing, but I then proceeded to hold the Christmas ball over the flame to see what would happen.

Well, you can guess what happened next. Pow! The glass ball exploded with a nice poof noise. Fortunately, the glass of the ornament was so thin that it didn't create a very strong containment for the energetic combustion reaction that started inside it. Thus, the explosion was more of a poof than a big nasty bang you would expect from a well-built bomb. Unfortunately, the consequence of this poof caused burning bits of match heads and broken glass to be propelled all over the living room. My mother's living room curtains took the worst of the explosion because many of the burning match heads landed in the lacy folds of the curtains and ended up as a bunch of ugly black-ringed holes.

To this day, I don't understand how I avoided a month of being grounded over this episode. Obviously, my mother was not pleased that I ruined her living room curtains, but perhaps she and dad were just glad the whole house didn't catch fire. I must have at least learned a lesson because there were no more near disasters with explosives in my remaining early years.