CidaSoft Airsoft Hand Grenade

A lot of airsoft hand grenades scare me. The idea of a plastic container rupturing/exploding so as to create a loud bang (and occasionally a BB shower) doesn't sit well with me, as all I imagine is an errant piece of plastic flying through the air at who know's what velocity. CidaSoft offers an interesting alternative to the aforementioned grenades, using the tried and tested technology shown below:

RAP4 GOLF Paintball Composition

After hearing a few people ask what the RAP4 GOLF Paintball was made of I decided to do some investigating. I saw that Psiworx from M. Carter Brown stated in one forum post that, "The shell is polyethylene wax, calcium carbonate, and a polyethylene powder. The fill is barium sulfate and silica."

Reading this made me a bit uneasy, as while those are all inert ingredients, inhaling some kinds of silica can lead to disease called silicosis. So, I went straight to the source, emailing APS Paintball (the manufacturer of the GOLF rounds) asking about the composition of the balls. They sent me the complete MSDS sheets for their product.

Here are the details:

Shell material: PE dip plastic powder, Polyethylene Wax, Heavy Active Calcium Carbonate, Plastic Pigment

Inside material: Barium sulfate, Non-crystalline amorphous precipitated silica

Now lets take a look at the health effects of the individual components:

Polyethylene wax - Nothing to worry about, but from an environmental standpoint it's not that great (does not fully decompose for centuries)

Calcium carbonate - Active ingredient found in over the counter antacids such as Tums, perfectly safe.

Barium sulfate - Very insoluble in the human body and is eliminated readily. You probably shouldn't eat it, but there aren't any real issues with it.

Non-crystalline amorphous precipitated silica - Non-crystalline, amorphous silica is not linked to silicosis, so it isn't dangerous in that regard.

All that considered, I'd say the GOLF paintballs are perfectly safe to play with given normal paintball play. If anyone is interested in reading the MSDS sheets for themselves, I'll gladly send it to you.

Update - Dec 7 2009: I have been in further contact with APS, and the weight of the GOLF Paintballs is 3.5g/ball. This does not exceed the ASTM standard.

Capillary Tube Update

Now featured on Benchfly!

Capillary Tubes

When performing thin layer chromatography, the most common method of spotting samples on the silica plates is using something called a capillary tube. Capillaries tubes are just thin glass tubes that draw and deposit liquids via capillary action. While this in itself is rather mundane, the method of preparing them is some of the most fun I have in my labs.

Shown below is a short video on the preparation of the tubes.

The gentleman in the video uses small tubes to produce two capillary tubes with every pull, but in my labs I prepare the tubes from glass pipettes and larger butane torches. This is what accounts for the very large size and bizzare shape of the tube I have shown in the picture at the beginning of the post. From these large tubes I can make many (about 10) usable capillary tubes for my TLCs.

Here's a video of me pulling some tubes while I was waiting for an aldol condensation reaction to finish.