Burn Gas, Burn!

Today I burned hydrogen made from chemical that was inside a bag from a military thing to heat food. My father works at a military place -- that’s how we got the bag.

First, we made a hole in the bag. We inserted a tube into the hole and sealed it with scotch tape, a kind of sticky tape. We did it so that now any gas from the bag would come through the tube. Here is the photograph of the bag and the tube.

Then, we poured some water into it. You can see the photograph how we did it.

The chemical inside the bag started to crackle. Then the bag started to puff up because the chemical and water started to react and make hydrogen gas. Also the bag started to heat up and became very hot. The water turned into steam and I saw steam coming out of the tube. Steam came out because there was strong pressure inside the bag. Here is a picture of that steam coming out.

Inside the bag were small pieces called Magnesium (MAG-NEE-ZHEE-UM). Atoms of magnesium broke up the molecules of water. And each molecule of water is made up of two atoms of Hydrogen (HI-DRO-DZHEEN) and one atom of Oxygen (OH-KSEE-DZHEEN). Magnesium took prisoners--one atom of oxygen and one atom of hydrogen. One atom of hydrogen was left. Those leftover atoms of hydrogen all got together and made up the gas hydrogen.

Hydrogen is a special gas. It burns very easily. So we took a lighter and we lit up the hydrogen gas coming out of the tube. Hydrogen started to burn and made a flame coming out of the tube.

Many years ago there was a blimp called Hindenburg and it was filled with hydrogen. There was a storm and lightning hit the blimp and the blimp burned very fast. There were many people who died. See this movie.

Our bag did not explode, but our hydrogen burned.