When I was a teen, one of my friends' dad worked in a machine shop manufacturing components from magnesium. My friend would go in on weekends and do janitorial tasks for some spare cash. He would also bring home #80 paper shopping bags full of magnesium shavings. We used to set that stuff alight in strange places. One time, after the trash had been collected, we dragged the trash barrel (which in those days was a 55 gallon drum with little hard rubber wheels) into his back yard. We took a 1 pound coffee can and stuffed in a bunch of shavings and filled it 1/3 with water. I pulled a shaving up as a wick, set the can inside the trash barrel and lit it. Of course, once the fire hit the water, the magnesium exploded, sending flaming shavings into...the massive tree in their back yard.
Now, the tree is on fire, but we couldn't put it out with water, because that would just accelerate the fire. We had to wait for the magnesium to stop burning first, then put it out. Good times!
Lucky to be alive, I am! There was flaming magnesium all over the back yard, but we both somehow managed to escape unharmed.
