I've gathered up some common household ingredients, 
and a frying pan, because today we're doing some 
kitchen chemistry.  This is the type of cooking that 
gets me excited because I'm trying out recipes for 
solid-state rocket fuel.
To get started, I'm taking this portable electric 
burner outside and away from anything flammable.  I'll 
add a frying pan, and set the heat to medium-low.  
This lid should help it heat faster, and while that's 
warming up, I'll place one of these plastic cups on a 
digital scale and turn it on.  When the scale has 
zeroed out the weight of the cup, I'm ready to measure 
portions of these two ingredients.  The black bottle 
is a stump remover from the garden section of a local 
hardware store, and I'm using it because it contains 
Potassium Nitrate.  And according to the MSDS, it 
contains a lot of it.  The second ingredient is plain 
white table sugar and I couldn't resist a little taste 
before investing it into this experiment.  Ok, this 
recipe calls for a 60/40 mix by weight, and I'm going 
to make a 100 gram batch, so I'm adding 60 grams of 
stump remover first, followed by 40 grams of 
granulated white sugar.  That looks good there, so I'll 
give the cup a little shake to mix the two together, and 
then try to pour it neatly and evenly into the pre-
heated pan.  Over the course of about 5 minutes, I'll 
need to stir the mix up a little so it doesn't burn on 
the bottom.  Not much seems to be happening yet, but 
after about 8 minutes I can see some of the sugar 
starting to caramelize into a liquid.  At this point 
I'll need to be stirring and mixing a little more 
frequently, and as I do, the mixture begins to liquify 
and clump together, turning a golden brown.  Just a 
couple of minutes later, the entire batch looks like 
cookie dough, and the white powder is completely mixed 
in.  I'll need some sort of container to hold this in, 
and I'm thinking these Mega Block Legos might work.  
At this point, the mixture is just runny enough that 
it can be coaxed into the container.  It takes about 
60 grams to fill this red block, and when I've cooked 
up a little more, I'll add that to the blue one.  It's 
darker in color because it cooked longer, and 
generally speaking, I think the less it is cooked, the 
better.  There's just a little bit left over, and it's 
hot, but if I'm careful, I can roll it into a test 
piece for measuring the burn rate later on.  Alright, 
while those are cooling, I've got one we can light off 
just to see how it looks.  I'll get it started with a 
propane torch, and when the fuel catches, it throws 
off a nice little flame, and quite a bit of smoke.  
This mix is 4 months old and seems to burn a little 
slow, but it's still a good show.  And you can tell by 
the melting plastic that it does get pretty hot.  Ok I 
just made 3 more batches of fuel that are all a little 
different.  To the yellow one I added 30 grams of 
water and then turned the heat up to boil the water 
out.  After a couple of minutes, the mix turned to a 
white mush and was ready when all the water seemed to 
have cooked out.  This method prevented the sugar from 
caramelizing, but was a little crumbly when dry.   
I packed that into this yellow LEGO block and set it 
aside.  Another batch was made using a mix of 58% 
Stump Remover, 29% Sugar, and this time I used 13% 
Corn syrup, and 30mL water.  The water was cooked out 
the same way as the last, and then about 1 gram of 
homemade rust powder was added, and stirred in 
throughly.  When it was ready, it looked like a creamy 
chocolate frosting, and I packed that into the green 
LEGO.  I may have accidentally trapped an air bubble 
inside.  You'll see this explode later when we test 
it.  For my last batch, I sprinkled some red rust into 
the mix while it was still wet, and like the others, 
stirred it until the water had evaporated out.  This 
mix kind of looked like a delicious red velvet cake, 
but I wouldn't recommend eating it.  I took samples 
from each fuel, and measured them all to a length of 
1", then timed the burn rates to see how they 
performed against each other.  I was happiest with the 
batch made with my homemade rust because it burned the fastest.  
I had a few sample scraps left over that 
were begging to be burned up, so I did that.  And now 
here we are with 5 samples ready for ignition.  
Testing the red one, I'm really impressed at how fast 
it ignites and burns, but a little nervous when it 
starts spinning out of control.  I'm out of there.  
The blue one lights off just as powerfully, and builds 
thrust to the point to where it takes off, leaving me 
in a total whiteout.  This yellow one was the un-
caramelized version and I got smarter this time by 
pointing it down to prevent it from taking off like 
the others.  It burned slower than the first two, but 
the amount of smoke it put off was still incredible!  
Ok so this green one has the rust in it, and it lit up 
instantly and then blew up.  But did you notice how 
much faster the burn rate was?  That's amazing.  For the black 
one I decided it was a good idea to hold it in place 
with another cement brick, and that strategy seemed to 
work.  At least this time I didn't get sprayed in the 
face with spewing hot rocket fuel.  Overall I think 
I'm happiest with these mixtures using the rust.  With 
a different homemade casing that actually has a 
nozzle, I was able to get a successful rocket launch 
that I think went a couple thousand feet high.  
Well that's it for this project.  If you like these videos, 
please subscribe and share with your friends.  
I appreciate your support.  Thanks for watching.  
