Lemonade bomb (spoiler alert for "The Foreigner")

[ShayanJ]

I just watched the movie "The foreigner". In one scene, the character played by Jackie Chan, makes a bomb with a really weird recipe. Here's the scene:


As you can see, he just hangs two lemonade bottles from a string. Then attaches a match box and a cigarette to the string from which the bottles are hanging. As far as I know, the match box and the cigarette just form a delayed trigger. So the explosion should be caused by the falling and breaking of the lemonade bottles which doesn't make sense. I mean, people surely drop and break a lot of lemonade bottles but we don't see any lemonade caused explosion!
So maybe its not just the lemonade but some kind of a reaction between the lemonade and whatever chemicals released from the matches and the cigarette. But even that seems unlikely and so I'm kind of thinking maybe this wasn't a real bomb recipe. Does anyone know anything about this? Is this a real bomb recipe? And if it is, how does it really work?
Thanks

 

[Borek]

Any particular reason to believe the bottle really contained lemonade?

 

[Merlin3189]

I can't read the labels: they could be tonic water or just soda? But it certainly wasn't like any lemonade I've ever drunk!
At airports in the UK, we are prevented from taking lemonade or water (or anything liquid) onto planes, as we are told they can cause explosions. Perhaps the movie makers believe that?

I think the specific worry is about hydrogen peroxide, but I don't know what happens if you drop a bottle of that? I think we buy 6% hydrogen peroxide in water and it can expand to 21x its original volume by release of oxygen. So 60% H2O2 could expand to 201x its original volume and 90% to 301x.
Here he had about a litre in the two bottles and I don't think a sudden injection of 2-300 litres of oxygen in that environment would do much more than break the windows. With some heat of reaction, maybe that could double the initial volume? If there were a lot of combustible materials, hot oxygen could easily ignite them and cause burning, but maybe not detonation.

Perhaps the bottles contained something else? As a layman movie watcher, nitro glycerine springs to mind a s a liquid with a lot of energy and can be detonated by small impact. But there may be many others.

Perhaps the two bottles contained different substances that, when mixed, reacted violently, like rocket fuels. How violent this could be I'm not sure. There certainly could be a lot of energy released, but the rate might depend on good mixing. Whether there are any fuels which are reasonably stable to carry around and remain liquid at room temperature under the sort of pressure a glass bottle can stand, i don't know.

 

[BvU]

You have plans ? Tell us...

 

[ShayanJ]

Any particular reason to believe the bottle really contained lemonade?

Well...I just assumed the default rules in movies...if there is anything out of the ordinary, its shown. So if he had actually obtained anything irregular and particularly explosive, I assume it would have been shown(as is shown later in the movie where he does obtain specialized materials for more bombs). Of course there was some scenes in which he gathered some supplies but nothing liquid.
As with the labels, maybe its hard to read them in the youtube clip, here's a clearer picture:

The label and the color of the liquid says its lemonade. I suppose Nitro glycerine would have been transparent, and if they were different chemicals, they wouldn't be so much alike in their color.

You have plans ? Tell us...

I'm going to attack the PF HQ and liberate all the crackpots Greg has enslaved in his dark dungeons.

 

[Borek]

I think the specific worry is about hydrogen peroxide

I believe this whole "no liquids on plane" thing started after London bombings decade ago and was based on the idea that someone aboard the plane could produce TCAP from acetone and hydrogen peroxide. Technically pure nonsense (yes, TCAP is produced from these substances, no, no way you are going to be able to make it just by mixing both liquids), but it is not the only technical nonsense that became a law.

 

[Merlin3189]

Technically pure nonsense

I do like that phrase. Much better than common commercial grade nonsense.
I suppose it is guaranteed to contain less than 1 part in a million truth or something.

 

[BvU]

Not nitroglycerine. And a lot of artificial visual effects from the stunt guys. The flame burst is hard to believe.

 

[Darren M]

The devil is in the details. If you look closely when the character first places the bottles on the floor, before setting the ball of string on top of one, the two liquids appear to be slightly different in color (the one on the right is darker, more yellowish than the one on the left). Also, when he ties the string around the tops of the bottles, you can clearly see that the lids are twist-off caps, and the seal has been broken (evidenced by the loose metal ring). This suggests he replaced the (aptly-named) "Cloudy Lemonade" with volatile liquids that cause an explosion when combined. The fact that he uses two bottles, not just one, further supports such a determination. If it wasn't a reaction requiring the mixture of two different liquids, he would've only needed one bottle. What the liquids are is anyone's guess (probably to avoid people "trying it at home").

 

[Bystander]

Just watched the movie; gasoline. No magic, the ignition is provided by the matchbook flaring.