Exploding concrete!?

[dsteele 20]

I'm not a builder (of bricks and stone) and most of what I have to say has been said before, but what the heck? I'll say it anyway.

 

I learned about exploding rocks on one of my first camp outs as a new Boy Scout. We were camping on Scout property that was mostly Lake Michigan shoreline. One of our Assistant Scoutmasters stayed up after we had all gone to bed and was putting wood on a fire when a rock blew up and put little pieces of shrapnel in his shoulder and scratched his face.

 

In the morning (he didn't have to go to the emergency room, the Scoutmaster treated him -- this was a long time ago) he explained that a small rock was in the fire and that it was from the beach. There was water in the rock, he explained, and when the energy of the water boiling in the rock reached a certain point, it got out -- quickly.

 

After that, we became very careful about what kind of rocks we used for the old "bean hole beans" (I mentioned those in a previous post a while ago) and the chicken in a backpack. We also didn't do fire on concrete or cinderblock.

 

A bunch of us also took geology and firemanship merit badge -- we didn't want to get "blowed up."

 

DS

 

PS -- I'm glad there were no injuries.