My 14 year old son is taking a science course this year that requires each student to complete a major science project each quarter. Tyler, my son, has been fascinated with things that explode, make loud noises and go ka-boom! I hope this is a phase…

His most recent project was the potato cannon. You may have seen it on You-tube. I imagine about every 14 year old boy has. It’s quite impressive.

Well, dad is not so up on these things. Mom helped Tyler buy the parts at Home Depot, and Tyler, along with a friend, built the contraption that was supposed to shoot potatoes out into the wild beyond.

I was highly skeptical about how far a spud would fly out of a 4 foot long, 2 inch in diameter tube they built with a lighting chamber on one end.

The idea was to squirt a bit of flammable spray, like hairspray, into the lighting chamber, turn a flint inserted into the chamber to create a spark, and ka-boom, the pressure built was supposed to jet a potato jammed into the tube into outer space.

Since all this talk about explosions and fire and all coming from the kids sounded a bit precarious, the kids were required to have dad at hand to supervise decisions made during experimentation.

The boys finished up in the evening, and of course, the world had stopped until they got to try out their new creation.

So out to the back yard we went.

We aimed the spud-cannon into the empty desert behind our house. The boys were ribbing me because they could hear doubt in my voice about what would happen. I told them I’d eat the potato if they could get it past the fence around our yard. (This was not too wise on my part…) They laughed and howled and proclaimed I was having raw potato for dinner.

They got all set up and prepared for first launch. Tyler’s friend injected a bit of spray into the chamber, and they tried to ignite it. No luck. No ignition.

They tried 2 or 3 more times, and nothing happened.

I decided they were too timid about the amount of spray used and needed to put more in. They were being very cautious, and rightfully so. I had not seen the You-tube video, and they had, so they really had a much better idea of what to expect than I did.

Anyway, dad, knowing best, puts his finger on the boy’s thumb and gets him to inject a healthy amount of spray. They tighten the cap, ignite the spark, and KA-BOOM, an explosion of fire blows out the end of the cannon like we were in artillery warfare. My son, who is holding the cannon, about lands on his behind, and that potato shot out to the other side of the county.

Talk about dancing and leaping for joy! The boys were giddy with excitement. Success they yelled!

Of course, they hadn’t forgotten about me eating the raw potato, but thank goodness, it was dark, it had flung out hundreds of feet, and there was no way they were going to find that spud.

They promised to be out looking the next day, though. Thankfully, they didn’t follow through…

I have to say, the exploding spud was quite an impressive display that night. I couldn’t believe a dinky squirt of hairspray combined with a prick of a spark could create such a powerful explosion.

I thought of James’ statement in reference to other types of explosions. He wrote,

I can think of times when a word unthoughtfully spoken has caused a firestorm of protest and anger. We see it in politics frequently. And it happens in families too.

I think I witnessed a similar type of reaction in the spud cannon. A little flammable material, combined with an igniting spark, can turn into quite a blow-up.

Mortal mind would want to ignite resentment into full-blown anger, jealousy into revenge, greed into dishonesty, and hate into murder.

And the spiritual lesson I segued from the cannon experience was, that as we keep the chambers of our thought free of highly flammable material, we’ll be protected from unnecessary blow-ups. We’ll be immune from off-putting remarks or sparks of mortal mind coming from unexpected places that would trigger a harmful reaction.

A consciousness of Love is not ignitable!

P.S. Tyler and his friend got a 99% on their project. Good for them!