rthmjohn

I meant KMnO4. My bad.

Jdurg is right. I've never done it before, but I have read through all of the precautions. I live in the desert, so there's plenty of wide open space without any plant life whatsoever (save a few scattered shrubs). But just real quick, I recently purchased a scale accurate to the nearest tenth of a gram and had it calibrated. I weighed out 3g of Al powder and 10g of iron rust. I stirred it for a while, and then placed 3g of KMNO3 on top of the thermite. I used glycerine to ignite it, but the only thing that burned was the KMNO3. What went wrong?

I'm investing in one currently.

the aluminum is fine powder (2 micrometer particle size) and the rust is also fine powder. They look very well mixed too. Is there a specific color the mixture should be to indicate a nice ratio, like pink or light red?

I'm having trouble igniting my thermite. I'm using magnesium ribbon as fuse, which is what most people use, so I'm guessing that it has to do with the ratio of aluminum powder to rust. I don't have a scale of any sort so I used the densities to calculate the approximate volumetric ratios which came out to be (I may have miscalculated) about two parts of rust to one of aluminum. What am I doing wrong?

into the ampoule

Anybody got a good method of effectively collecting the chlorine gas from a bleach/HCl reaction into a glass ampoule. I can't figure out how to minimize the loss of Cl2 into the atmosphere.

Making thermite using magnetite produces a more intense reaction, so I'm told. I've been using hematite, which is a pain in the buttocks to make in large quantities, but I've heard that magnetite can be found in beach sand and is easy to extract with a large magnet. Can magnetite be found in the desert sand as well? If not, then why does it occur in beach sand?

I need a step-by-step guide for calculating the reaction enthalpy of thermite at 2000 degrees celsius. Can somebody help?

I intend to react it with some glycerin

Where can I buy potassium permanganate without a chemist's licence? I know it won't be in a very high concentration, so is there a way to purify it? I heard it can be found in the plumbing section of some stores. What brand is best? Is it possible to prepare KMnO4 at home?