In chemistry class one day my teacher was telling us about when he was young and him and a friend ignited a chunk of magnesium, burning through a talbe and the floor, down to the foundation. Now except for the buring holes in your house part, this sounded like a lot of fun so I decided to attemp to ignite my Mg firestarter bar.
The Test: The first attempt was pretty much gauranteed to fail. I filed of some Mg powder with a metal file, ground some edges into the bar to hopefully make it ignite easier, and lit it with a strip of Mg ribbon.
Block, ribbon and powder:
Set up on a board:
Results: The powder ignited with no problem, but nothing happened to the bar. I had ordered some thermite and decided to try it again once it came.
Test #2: This time I used my newly arrived thermite. I decided to ignite it with a mixture of potassium chlorate (KClO3) and sugar, which was ignited with a drop of sulfuric acid (H2SO4). 50g of thermite was poured onto a board, with the Mg block stuck in it. A good size pile of KClO3/sucrose was then dumped on top, and a drop of H2SO4 was added.
Before:
After:
As you can see, the mixture did not ignite the thermite. I ran inside and mixed up some more KClO3/sucrose, and grabbed my Mg ribbon. The KClO3/sucrose was then added to the thermite in layers, with Mg ribbon stuck in here and there for good measure.
Before:
KClO3/sucrose igniting:
Thermite ignites:
Results: The thermite burned with no problem this time, but the Mg bar still didn't ignite, so I have given up on that and will use it for shavings/powder instead.
Thermite residue (iron and burns):
Mg bar coated with soot, but not much else happened:
