The Exploding Apron

by Hap Rocketto

Last summer a local market, Sandy’s Fine Fruit Emporium, where my wife is a loyal customer, hired my daughter Sarah. I am sure, or like to think, that the fact that Sarah is a hard worker had more to do with her hiring than the fact that the head greengrocer, Sam, is a favorite cousin of my bride. Sandy’s enjoys a well deserved reputation for quality of product and service. They also treat their employees very well for on her first day Sarah was issued, without charge, a pair of polo shirts, a sweatshirt, a ball cap, and an apron all embroidered with the store logo.

My wife coveted the handsome dark green apron and casually mentioned the fact to Jim, the store manager, who immediately presented her with one of her own. She brought it home and proudly displayed it to me. It opened a dusty file in my trivia filled mind and in a flash I was carried eastward to Switzerland and the University of Basel and back in time to the 1840s. I recalled telling my science students that it was there that a roly-poly professor of chemistry, Christian Friedrich Schönbein, who was fond of eating sauerkraut, black sausage, and dumplings-a man after my own heart-had discovered Ozone.

Ozone (O3), so much in the news for its depletion over the Antarctic, is a form of elemental Oxygen (O2). The molecules of ozone contain three oxygen atoms and are unstable compared to O2. Ozone occurs naturally in small amounts in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and in the air of the lower atmosphere after a lightning storm. Ozone is a paradox for it is a strong oxidizer that is dangerous in high concentrations to humans and animals as well as rubber and plastic in the lower atmosphere, yet its presence in the upper atmosphere provides protection from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

What I never mentioned to the class was Schönbein’s contribution to my major passion, firearms. After he had made his name with the discovery of Ozone he began research into nitrocellulose. Black powder, the mechanical mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and “villainous saltpetere” had reigned supreme as the only explosive since the tenth century. It had disadvantages such as sensitivity to damp; it fouled firearm barrels with residue, and produced volumes of heavy gray smoke while creating only a low order explosion.

When away from his laboratory at the University Schönbein would sometimes experiment at home. Frau Schönbein looked askance at these projects as they wreaked havoc on her spotless kitchen and so she forbade him its use the family stove for his experiments. Her dictum being more often than not honored in the breach, one can only imagine what effects his experiments might have had on the taste, and toxicity, of his favorite fare of sauerkraut, black sausage, and dumplings.

One day, driven by scientific curiosity and his wife’s convenient absence, the paradoxically brilliant and obtuse Schönbein, a man who made major contributions to science yet felt he could pull the cotton over his wife’s head deserves just such appellations. On that fateful day in 1845, he violated his wife’s orders. Clumsy as well as roly-poly, imagine if you will Dickens’ character Mr. Fezziwig or Jim Henson’s Bunsen Honeydew, he spilled a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids onto his Frau’s immaculate kitchen floor. Snatching up his wife’s cotton apron he swabbed up the mess. When all incriminating evidence of his disobedience was seemingly gone he absent mindedly returned the garment to its hook by the stove to dry, so as to hide his domestic crime. There it hung, awaiting its unsuspecting owner to come home. Schönbein’s waywardness would have gone unnoticed except for one thing. The apron spontaneously ignited and disappeared in a bright flash of light, leaving behind just a whiff of smoke, a few ashes, and an astounded Schönbein, now in deep domestic trouble as his wife figuratively, if not actually, searched for her rolling pin. Fortunately for the good professor Frau Schönbein was not wearing it at the time of the conflagration. Unfortunately here is no record of her reaction to the reaction. I am sure her pyrotechnics greatly exceeded those of the apron and would be most amusing to read.

Schönbein had inadvertently converted the cellulose, the cotton, of the apron into nitrocellulose with the addition of his mixture. Whereas in black powder the charcoal and nitrate from the saltpeter had been held together in a mixture the new material actually combined the two into a single molecule. The nitric acid served as an internal source of oxygen, the role of saltpeter in black powder, and completely oxidized when heated. Nitrocellulose exhibited potential as a replacement for black powder and because the source of the cellulose was cotton the new explosive was baptized “guncotton.” Attempts to manufacture the highly unstable guncotton for military use failed at first, because the factories had a tendency to blow up. It was not until 1891 that Sir James Dewar, no relation to Sir Thomas Dewar who endowed the Dewar International Trophy Cup-just an interesting coincidence, and Frederick Augustus Abel managed to make the new compound safe to handle.

Although the serendipity of my wife and daughter’s Sandy’s apron and my musings does not carry the import of Schönbein and his wife’s cotton apron I do hope you find the story entertaining.

About Hap Rocketto

Hap Rocketto is a Distinguished Rifleman with service and smallbore rifle, member of The Presidents Hundred, and the National Guard’s Chief’s 50. He is a National Smallbore Record holder, a member of the 1600 Club and the Connecticut Shooters’ Hall Of Fame. He was the 2002 Intermediate Senior Three Position National Smallbore Rifle Champion, the 2012 Senior Three Position National Smallbore Rifle Champion a member of the 2007 and 2012 National Four Position Indoor Championship team, coach and captain of the US Drew Cup Team, and adjutant of the United States 2009 Roberts and 2013 Pershing Teams. Rocketto is very active in coaching juniors. He is, along with his brother Steve, a cofounder of the Corporal Digby Hand Schützenverein. A historian of the shooting sports, his work appears in Shooting Sports USA, the late Precision Shooting Magazine, The Outdoor Message, the American Rifleman, the Civilian Marksmanship Program’s website, and most recently, the apogee of his literary career, pronematch.com.
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1 Response to The Exploding Apron

  1. Stan McDonald says:

    Thanks Hap!! Wonderful story… interesting the things that provoke you thought processes, huh.

    God Bless you and your family, Happy Thanksgiving!

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