Will probably have to check out Genshin Impact for myself sometime, but for me, it’d be Pyro🔥.
For years now ever since I was young, I’ve have this fixation with fire.The way the flames like to dance and appear alive, or the way the warmth can feel comforting or unbearable.
I also have a slight
tendency to play with fire (bad idea, I know).I’ve lit sticks and twirled them around pretending they were swords that I’d use to cut down my enemies, or a magic wand to cast spells.
Eventually when they inevitably went out and would start smoking (either by just burning out or by me waving it out) I’d write letters with the smoke and watch them blow away.
Another fun story that I might get more into some time, would be last August when me and my brother tried “breathing” fire using a stick with a rag wraped around it that was soaked in lamp oil, and then first blew flour through the flame, then after we’d got a little practice, lamp oil which fun fact, literally tastes like nothing.
Finally, there was my longing desire to get my hands on some Potassium Nitrate/KNO3 (a.k.a. saltpeter). It has a few uses, such as a food preservative, stump remover, or fertiliser, or even as one of the key ingredients of gunpowder serving as an oxidiser.
However, my personal
favourite use is as a propellant in fireworks, or of you don’t pack the mixture into a rocket, as a smoke bomb.
I saw videos on YouTube of people making ninja smoke bombs that exploded into a smoke screen when thrown at the ground so naturally wanted to try making my own, and thus be one step closer to becoming a true ninja.
As an interesting sidenote, in my reading I just so happened to stumble onto wikiHow for the first time, and all the articles of making smoke bombs were the first ones that I read.
(N.B. I never had, nor do I ever plan to use that information to bring harm to others.)
I eventually settled on trying to make a smoke bomb that used ping-pong balls of all things as fuel, as I didn’t have the magnesium starters for the throwable versions, nor gunpowder (probably a good thing too for reasons I’ll explain in a bit).
Naturally I decided to be stupid and make a large one stuffed with paper and a six-pack of ping-pong balls. Needless to say, it didn’t work (the thing din’t even light) and all I got for my effort was a charcoal stain on the back seat of my dad’s truck.
I wouldn’t try again until years later when I started doing Chemistry that I finallygot my hands on some Potassium Nitrate!! (srsly, I had been asking for this thing for yearsat this point, you have no idea how happy I was!
)
I didn’t actually try making a smoke bomb out of the stuff until months later after I had gotten a bit of experience working with chemicals, which is probably for the better, because I can tell you for a fact, that without that experience, I would have been pretty careless while handling the stuff (especially considering what I was hoping to do with it).
Fortunately though I was actually pretty careful when I did my mini-experiment: mixing it with sugar in different rations and testing to see which one burnt fastest. I was really just doing it for fun as opposed to trying to learn something, otherwise I would have done more tests and with more varietly. I also wouldn’t have put all three mixture on the same piece of brick to burn (they all caught fire from each other).
I haven’t actually done anything with KNO3 since
then which is kinda wierd considering how long I’d been trying to get it, although I plan on doing something with it eventually.
(of course seeing as how operating fireworks is illegal
without a permit and considering I'm underage, I don't think I'd be able to get one; then again I wasn't trying to make fireworks, just smoke bombs which now that I think about it may be considered the same thing. crap.)
