Fireworks

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steel wool + 9v battery

in boy scouts they do it all the time.
for the pioneering merit badge they demonstrate starting a campfire using a 9 v battery and steel wool.
works very fast.
 
Who's talking about launches. I was talking about the real things - bombs.

When I was 14 I built the strongest bombs of all my friends. We used an abandoned military training area to add a few craters. My biggest one was 15m diameter and 3m deep.

Yes, who said anything about launches?
 
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Most of the igniter controllers I used as a kid were only a single 9V. They didn't last long, but you could get a dozen or more launches off one.
 
Did they use a hot wire? Either my analysis was wrong, or the simple 9V pile is more formidable than I thought.
 
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...or, I overestimated the requried temperature. It' very possible that matches don't need 400 degrees to light.
 
...or, I overestimated the requried temperature. It' very possible that matches don't need 400 degrees to light.

I don't know if you're talking about fahrenheit or celsius... if it's fahrenheit, I have no idea how hot that is but according to a page I just found on google, match heads ignite at approximately 80 degrees celsius; I don't know about the reliability of that source, but it sounds feasible. Don't forget that match heads are explosive and have low activation energy, hence why you ignite them simply by the force of friction.
 
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Don't forget that match heads are explosive and have low activation energy, hence why you ignite them simply by the force of friction.

That was proved in the USA back a decade or two. Boys made a multi-stage rocket using milk cans filled with 5,000 match heads. When they touched the rocket off one of them lost his life.
 
I've heard of pipe-bombs made from match heads (eep) but rockets? Did it actually work as a rocket, or just explode and kill the unwary creator?
 
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