Well well… My housemate clearly has too much time on his hands. Marijn made his own homemade Onion Cannon… It’s about 1.5 meter long consisting of a 50 cm long and about 15 cm thick PVC tube (the kind of plastic that is used in buildings) being the ‘gas chamber’ with attached to that a 1 meter long 8 cm thick tube being the ‘launch tube’ :P.

To the gas chamber he wired a spark lighter, one of those things you use to ignite the gas in your kitchen. So without having to open the gas chamber he can make sparks within. The back of the gas chamber can be opened and closed with a big screwcap. To launch the onion, he puts the onion in the launch tube, he sprays alcohol vapour (the kind of stuff women spray in their hair to look sexy) in the gas chamber, then closes the gas chamber with the screw cap and then uses the spark lighter to make a spark to ignite the gas and launch the onion.

He tried it once in his room without the onion while I was working at my computer. I jumped a feet in the air lol. What a boom! And I didn’t know what it was lol. After that he put his cannon on the balcony to test it for real. He pointed somewhere where he wasn’t going to hit anything vital and ignited the gas. And well… I have to say… I’m impressed… There was no sight of the onion anymore after the blow :P. Never thought you could build a cannon like that on your own… Unfortunately for my housemate he blew out the screw cap of his cannon as it was apparently not ready for such a blow. Maybe the onion was sitting in the launch tube a little too tight or something… He said he was going to buy a new cap ;).