Rjb641

Icarus poses some pretty interesting questions... the UK laws are extremely confusing and ill defined.

I for one would have difficulty defining what constitutes either 'practical use' or 'experimentation'. I guess that fundamentally, if 'practical use' were to include manufacture of a rocket motors, then Zinc Sulphur would fall into the non-legal category. The inclusion or non-inclusion of an oxidising agent is pretty much irrelevant, and in many ways, in the Zn/S reaction, Sulphur acts as an electron acceptor and hence is at least technically an oxidising agent. In the same way, single component explosives like NI3.NH3 or HE are still explosives despite not including an oxidising agent as such.

The question of what actually defines an explosive/propellant is an interesting question. I'm not sure what anyone else thinks, but I don't think many people would consider an acid/bicarb rocket as an explosive? How about a dry ice 'bomb'? Again, not an explosive per se, just a solid undergoing phase change. Is it not more about rate of reaction?

Anyhow, just some things to think about...