The mystery of the exploding knitting needle is now in the hands of federal investigators.
Last week’s front page story about Paula Lalish’s knitting needle that exploded, with a sound as loud as a gunshot, as she was knitting next to her husband in a moving car has generated a rather broad spectrum of speculation about its cause.
Now, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has asked Lalish to mail the knitting needle to the federal agency. He's a bomb expert – and a knitter. He read about Lalish's exploding needle on an Internet knitters' chat room.
"I mailed it off today," Lalish said Aug. 16, "in a corrugated box and bubble wrap, as instructed." The report will be e-mailed back to Lalish, who also was interviewed on Monday by Seattle's KING 5 television news, whose reporter picked up the story from the Aug. 11 Leader over the weekend.
In the meantime, readers have posed explanations ranging from terrorists implanting explosives in knitting needles to the needle being made perhaps from spent radioactive fuel rods that when rubbed together rapidly would blow up.
One of Paula’s first responses, after she posed the question on knitters' chat rooms on the World Wide Web, was sent to her almost immediately via e-mail from an engineer in Sheffield, England. He postulated that static electricity building from her rapid knitting on metal needles in a moving car would cause enough expansion of gases inside the needle to cause it to explode. Another reader, Kevin Houston from Bridgeport, S.D., begs to differ. He found the story this way:
“My mother (who is a fiber artist) forwarded me the URL to the story because she knows my wife is an avid knitter. I then read the story online. My mother got the URL from a FiberArt e-mail list that she subscribes to. You were correct that with the Internet, news can travel all the way around the world and back again in less time than it takes a knitter to cast on enough stitches for a sweater.
I am a longtime student of physics and chemistry, and I am a voracious reader. I am currently a self-employed computer programmer. Know anyone who needs work on their website?"
So you see how the network expands. Now we are job searching. And why not? Following is Kevin's letter forwarded to moi at janhalliday@ptleader.com. You can also read the story, if you missed it, at our website at www.ptleader.com or click on “Jan’s Diary” at www.ptleader.com.
Dear Jan Halliday,
I read your article on the exploding knitting needle with great interest. I should like to take exception with the explanation offered by the quality control engineer from Sheffield.
I think the "explosive" in this case was simple heat expansion of some material inside the needle. Either the air itself or, more likely, some plastic or glue left over from the manufacturing process. Explosions oftentimes have very little to do with the material inside and much more to do with the container that houses it. Think of a champagne bottle that builds up too much CO2 pressure and explodes. No explosive, per se, but man, what a mess!
I don't buy the static charge theory, since she was knitting wool. I find it very hard to believe there was a static buildup on a metallic object like a knitting needle. A simple Google search using the terms "static" and "wool" turns up many articles that show wool would make static electricity only if it were rubbed on an insulator, like amber or wax. The plastic part of circular knitting needles is firmly affixed to the metallic part, so no rubbing would occur between these dissimilar materials.
Static electricity would not build up on a conductor like aluminum, especially if it were held in your hand. Also, if by some miracle there was a static charge, the arc would have happened on the outside of the needle, as the charge jumped to ground, not within the needle itself.
However, if the car was hot and the needles had been left inside and she was a very fast knitter, then I could see the needles becoming hot enough to melt the glue (or plastic) and perhaps cause it to emit some kind of vapor.
The pressure could build up until it was strong enough to burst the aluminum. The fact that the blowout occurred near the tip (where much rubbing occurs during the act of knitting), makes me suspect that friction, not static electricity, is responsible. Perhaps those needles were slightly thinner there due to some manufacturing defect.
Also, if there had been an actual burning, like from an explosion, then the residue inside the needles would be black, not white-gray, as it states in your article. I suspect that the white-gray residue is the recondensed plastic (or glue) as it vaporized and came in contact with the cooler portions of the needle.
Please pass this on to your readers with the suggestion that they not rub their needles together so hard. Using plastic needles will not help, as they have a lower melting point and would be likely to suffer the same fate, only sooner.
Drilling a small hole in the needle on the end opposite the point (to let any hot air out) would absolutely prevent this, whether the needles are aluminum or plastic and regardless of the cause of the excess pressure.
Sincerely,
Kevin Houston
Bridgewater, S.D.
(Jan Halliday is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous magazines. She's also the author of "Native Peoples of the Northwest: A Traveler's Guide to Land, Art and Culture" and other travel guides. See "Jan's Diary" at www.ptleader.com.)
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