KNO3 8g, ground in mortar & pestle to make smaller particles + powdered sugar (sucrose) 4g, mill mixed,

Complete mixing is important. Ideally, every sugar molecule should be right next to all the KN0₃s it needs to burn, and visa versa. But the KNO₃ grains are far too big for this. Even the powder sugar is too big, but the KNO₃ is about an order of magnitude larger (so 1000 times the volume).

So we

1. ground the KNO₃ for about 15 minutes to reduce the grain size. We used a ceramic mortar & pestle, which does not spark and is not enclosed, and with no fuel (sugar) in the mix, so is NOT a pipe bomb.
2. we combined the KNO₃ and the sugar and mixed them by shaking in a pill bottle with a few small (~1cm) wood balls. Our safety planning:
   • Wood and plastic don't spark,
   • Since we now had sugar in the mix adding the wood didn't increase the risk of combustion (if your mix is at the optimal ratio of fuel and oxidizer adding more of either one pushes you away from the optimal.
   • We considered spliting the mix between two bottles but decided against it
   • Although the pill bottle were closed (capped), we knew from experiments in previous years that these bottles don't act as pipe bombs–when the pressure inside increases the caps blow off. The people shaking were told not to have their thumb over the cap and keep it pointed away from people
3. Removed the mix from the bottles and proceeded as in earlier tests

It burned noticeably better than the same components in test 0; faster, with more zip and less smoke.