Question: What's the biggest explosion you've ever caused?

Laura Soul answered on 11 Mar 2013:

I try not to cause an explosions when I’m doing the job I do at the moment becasue I work with computers and fossils and both of those are very delicate, and don’t explode very often! However, in my other job that I did where I worked for a science radio show (The Naked Scientists – It’s a really great show so look it up online!) I did a special show where we made loads of explosions. The one that made the biggest fireball was when we filled a weather balloon (these are about two meters diameter) with hydrogen gas, which is extremely flammable. I got to set light to it, it makes a HUGE bang and a fireball that goes into the sky.

The best explosion we made though was in an experiment called ‘the barking dog”, you can see a video of when we did it here: http://videosift.com/video/The-Barking-Dog-chemistry-tube-explosion-experiment (maybe have a look at home if your school computers don’t let you see it). For this video I was sitting at the back of the room recording the sound for the radio, and when you see the big one at the end go wrong and the glass shatters some of it flew out and hit me all the way at the back. It was a good job the safety shield was there and that we were all wearing goggles!