what's thermite?

[janke]

hi, i'm a chemistry retard so could you guys tell me what the chemical composistion of Thermite is and what it's used for?

[D°©tª·D [DD]]

I'm not exactly a chemical genious either, but this is what I've heard about thermite.

It is a mixture of Iron Oxide and Aluminium, which burns at an extremely high temperature.

That's about all I know, I just felt the need to post this as I saw no-one else had.

[Stone]

From what I know...

It burns at a temperature of 3000 degrees.
All you need to do is mix aluminium powder and rust, and light it with a magnesium ribbon.

[ZBoxDemon]

Thermite is used in several applications. The military uses thermite grenades to melt enemy military hardware, as it burns at very high temperatures, it does what amounts to welding together machine parts, making them useless. You can also make it at home and screw over your enemies with it .

[Kakkaraun]

Anybody else have any interesting potential applications of thermite? Or is that SaC material?

[madscientist]

Magnesium ribbon is not a reliable method of igniting thermite. You're far better off using an incendiary composition such as H3 (a mix of chlorate and charcoal which is easily ignited by burning fuse) to ignite the thermite.

[godFather]

a pretty good thermite formula is as follows:
25.3% finely granulated aluminium
and 74.7% fe203 (rust)

ignite with magnesium ribbons.
if you want a good and easy way to make iron oxide for the thermite, then check out:
www.geocities.com/frogfot/synthesis.html#knocano.