In the dim and distant past of my ill-spent youth, I was a Cub Scout, and then a Boy Scout, and then, eventually, a Scoutmaster. This was not my first experience at teaching, but well predated my first appearance, as a teacher, or even student teacher, in a public school classroom. It probably did inform my later philosophy on classroom management (probably best described as "pick your battles").
The Boy Scout region for the group that I was with owned a property that was an island in the Chilliwack River. At this particular point, the Chilliwack River was not very big, so the island wasn't very big either. Access to the island was easily afforded by fording, but we had created a bridge, by the simple expedient of laying down a few sturdy planks. But there was no vehicle access to our Island property: just a footpath roughly down the middle of the island, campsites strung alternately on either side along it. The far end terminated at a somewhat larger campsite, which, of course, we, as the scoutmasters, scoffed for ourselves.
In those dim and distance carefree days, most of the time you are allowed to build campfires. We, although we didn't go whole hog and mandate Coleman or Primus stoves for the campers, had decided that discretion was the better part of fire safety, and that our campfires would not be open. Someone had taken some forty-five gallon drums, cut them in half, cut a rectangular opening on one side of the cut end, and a circular opening on the diametrically opposed side, but near the flat drum top, providing a simplistic stove, the rectangular opening allowing the scouts to build, and maintain a fire, inside the half drum, with the round opening on the opposite side acting as a kind of a chimney. This also provided for a large flat cooking surface, on top, eliminating the need to tenuously balance pots or frying pans on an open fire.
In order to increase the safety factor, we had told all of the scouting patrols that they were required to bank Earth up against the outside of the half drum, at least two-thirds of the way up the drum to the flat top.
We were, in fact, discussing this arrangement, and congratulating ourselves on its absolute safety, and protection from any fire related injuries, when we heard the bang. It wasn't just any bang. It was a very sharp report, like a gunshot, but much louder.
Of course the leaders, all of us, took off at once, running up the footpath, and checking the campsites to either side, looking for anything that might indicate a fire, or any similar untoward event. We were running rapidly, and checking rapidly as we went. Campsite to the left no fire. Campsite to the right, no fire. Campsite to the left, no fire. Campsite to the right, no fire. Campsite to the left, no fire. Campsite to the right, no fire. Wait a minute: no stove. No steel drum. But there was a grey circular patch, approximately the diameter of a forty-five gallon drum, with a fan of grey in front of it, and a straight line, about six inches across, pointing directly away on the opposite side of the grey circle. Where was the drum? In fact, since these this particular group had been very diligent about the banking of earth around their steel drum oven, and had banked it up all the way to the top, where was the banked earth?
Yes, this was the site of the explosion. We did, eventually, find the half steel drum. It was about thirty feet away, in the bushes.
One of the Scouts in this patrol had decided that he was hungry. He didn't feel like preparing a full meal, and it wasn't exactly meal time anyway. But he thought that, perhaps, rather than opening the can, and pouring the beans into a pot, and heating the pot that way, which might have taken a while in any case, and would have necessitated washing a pot, the quickest expedient was to throw the can of beans into the fire. He decided that the beans would heat up much more quickly that way, being surrounded by the fire, but protected by the can. (We did not, overmuch, task him with describing how he thought he was going to open a very hot can of beans, to get at the beans, and eat them.)
Of course, the predictable had happened. The beans, in the can, did heat up, and, presumably, boiled. The boiling, whatever it may have done to the beans in the can, in the way of charring, etc, definitely increased the pressure in the can. At some point, probably by the time the folds in the can had straightened out under the pressure, and the ends had probably started to bulge with the pressure, the pressure inside the can overcame the tensile strength of the steel of the can. Whatever water had been in the can, when released from pressure, turned into steam pretty much instantly. Since we never found any evidence of any actual beans, we figured that some of the beans, being composed of carbohydrates and other materials that were combustible at that temperature, probably added to the explosion. The resulting release of steam, and some overpressure from the explosion itself, fortunately vaporizes the flaming sticks and embers that were part of the fire. We never did find any evidence of any fires started (and, since it was a spring camp, the woods were pretty well soaking wet anyway).
The fire, itself, disappeared into ash, and, as mentioned, we never found any evidence of it anywhere, except for the ash design that I have described. The half forty-five gallon drum stove must have launched a considerable height into the air, and, also as previously mentioned, traveled thirty feet into the bush. The beans, presumably, vaporized and possibly combusted. We never even found a trace of the tin can. Also as noted, the force of the blast distributed the mounted earthwork to such an extent that you couldn't even tell where it had been.
We had second thoughts as to the absolute safety of this setup, but congratulated ourselves on a fortunate escape, and noted, to the boys, that putting a can of beans into a fire, to warm it up, was not a good idea.
The next day, there was another, although smaller, blast. In this case, the explosive device was a can of apple juice, which, since they open with a piece of sticky foil, occasioned a considerably smaller blast. Even so, we informed the boys that if there were any further experiments with throwing containers into the fires, they would be eating cold meals for the rest of the camp. We also started a discussion reconsidering the advisability of using Coleman stoves at the campsite.
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