Hand sanitizer!

The plan was this:
1. Wait until dark.
2. Place mostly empty 1-gallon bottle of Purell hand sanitizer (67% ethanol) in the middle of my neighbor's driveway.
3. Drop a lit firecracker into the mostly empty bottle of Purell gelled alcohol.
4. Run out of range of the big, blue fireball I hoped to create.
5. Watch big blue fireball appear.
6. Continue watching as my neighbor runs out of his house to find his driveway engulfed in globs of flames.
7. Have good laugh with neighbor.

The plan was going smoothly up until step #3. It turns out even though the ethanol is gelled it has a very high vapor pressure. This resulted in the empty portion of the bottle being very rich in ethanol vapor.

Translation: the ethanol fumes ignited as soon as the lit fuse of the firecracker came into contact with them. Unfortunatly, the lit firecracker was still in my hand. As soon as the firecracker's burning fuse moved over the bottle's opening a burst of flame shot forth like a jet engine's afterburner. It was really cool, except for the resulting 2nd degree burns on my thumb and first two fingers. It also sped up the rate at which the fuse was burning. Luckily, I'm pretty good at throwing my body out of harm's wa...KABLAMM!!

The fireball turned out to be less spectacular than I expected. Most of the ethanol had been consumed in the first fire. The firecracker mostly just shot really hot, really sticky goo around. Potentially useful, but not very awe-inspiring. My neighbor didn't even come out to see what the noise was.

-Blast