Experimenting with a Thermite BBQ

Food & Beverage Science
Experimenting with a Thermite BBQ

thermite

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Ben Krasnow, whose remarkable homebrew scientific apparatus (including a homebrew scanning electron microscope) we have covered here many times before, just posted this video. He writes:

I ignited four pounds of thermite made with aluminum/iron (III) oxide in a flower pot. The thermite reaction quickly formed liquid iron which dripped down out of the pot, and into a ceramic pan. I put a beef kebab directly onto the liquid iron, which cooked the food in under a minute. It was delicious!

My only concern would be that the molten iron isn’t hot enough to adequately sterilize the food. 1500 C just doesn’t seem safe to me, and until I see some solid research to the contrary I’m going to continue preparing all my meals in boiling tungsten, just to be on the safe side. [Thanks, Ben!]

8 thoughts on “Experimenting with a Thermite BBQ

  1. Jeremy Buseman says:

    Nice!  That would be great for a 4th of July celebration!

  2. Andrew William Huntley II says:

    My new hero of fast cooking.

  3. Anonymous says:

    That would cook one hell of a good Pittsburgh steak!

  4. Anonymous says:

    That would cook one hell of a good Pittsburgh steak!

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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