Can of Sprite as a Weapon of Choice. A continuing line of the
Weapon of Choice series.
I used to watch movies where a small
package the size of a
text book is enough to blow a good portion of a
house up and think, "No way something as small as that can produce an
explosion that big." Now I don't doubt it.
Don't doubt the power of a can of
Sprite. If we use the equation, E=mc2, the amount of
mass in a can of Sprite is approximately more than enough to blow
Los Angeles to smitherines. Of course, getting a nuclear chain reaction is a bit hard to do, so my friends and I settled for the next best thing.
Every summer, my friends and I go camping at the beach for a few days. Normally, we go with some parents, but last summer, we just went on our own. It's pretty
awesome, being able to wake up and be in the ocean literally less than 5 minutes later. Every night we set up a huge camp
fire with a ton of firewood we brought with us. We brought a fire pit too. It has a bottom to hold the wood, a center ring where heat can come out, and a pretty heavy metal top so the heat goes out the sides through the center ring, and not straight up.
The last night we were there, we pretty much threw in the rest of the logs and lighter fluid we had because fire's a pretty cool thing and we didn't want to lug it all back home. We were also throwing
trash in there, because we were too
lazy to throw it away, and it adds to the flame. So we throw
napkins, paper plates, etc... while playing
Risk on a nearby table under the light of a
lantern.
This is when my friend Bryan decides not to think and throws an old deformed can of Sprite into the fire.
Right after he does it, he goes, "Uhhh.... Maybe that wasn't such a good idea."
Me: What wasn't?
Bryan: I just threw a Sprite can in there.
Me: Oh, THAT'S smart! (sarcastic like).
What we're worried about if that the hot flames will heat the Sprite inside the can, and that the top will blow of shooting flaming hot Sprite everywhere. Turns out we would have been
lucky if that had happened.
Anyway, Bryan and I stand there watching the can of Sprite (While Joey, the third guy there, was probably adding like 20 armies to Eastern
Australia or something while we weren't looking) and a jet of Sprite starts shooting out a hole on the side. I'm relieved because I figure that the presure inside the can will be relieved, and I won't have to worry about boiling Sprite flying everywhere.
But then the hissing from the jet of Sprite shooting out got louder and louder. hhisssssssSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSS
SSSSSSS!!!
It got loud enough to warrent a response from Joey.
Joey: Uh... guys...
Can of Sprite: BOOOM!
Yeah, the can of Sprite blew up. Not just a little boom. But it blew the metal top right off the firepit. We see a
column of fire about seven feet high shoot up in the air, and the next thing I know, hot wood chips are falling everywhere. There's no more logs in the fireplace, just raining fire for a
radius of about 20 feet around the firepit. The soda can had blown the metal top off the fire pit, blew the logs to smitherines, and made a sound heard from quite a ways away. The Risk board has a bunch of burn marks in it now (like there was a real war on it!). Wood chips had landed on my
car. Bryan's
tent has holes in it. The neighboring campsite got holes in their tent. Everybody's running this way or that not knowing what to make of the noise and the red burning wood chips that are falling everywhere. The park
rangers rush over and starts trying to get water to put all the wood chips out before things start catching
fire. And the entire time, Bryan, Joey, and I are thinking, "Oh
crap. We're sooooo going to get kicked out of the park for this..."
Yeah, maybe this is why we have
parents. To keep us from doing stupid things like throwing a full can of Sprite into a fireplace.
Anyway, after all the hot embers are out, the rangers just asked what happened, and just told us that if we see anymore hot embers, to put them out right away. Then they left. They weren't the least bit mad or visibly shaken by it. It's like they see stuff like that every few hours or so.
Yes. That
explosion of fire has to be one of the coolest and stupidest things I have ever taken part in.