• Question: i've heard that magnesuim chloride is a substance that can be indentical to smokescreens is that true

    Asked by oh5924 to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 13 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Good question oh5924, and I had to just look up what a smokescreen was!
      It seems that zinc chloride is used most frequently, but I’m not a chemist so maybe Will can help with a better explanation here 🙂

    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Hi oh5924, zinc chloride is usually used in smoke screens – magnesium is quite different from zinc (it’s in a different column of the periodic table) so I don’t think it would work. You can check out the other chemicals used here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_screen

    • Photo: Will Reynolds

      Will Reynolds answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Hi oh5924. Magnesium chloride itself is not a good subatance to use to make the smoke in a smokescreen as it is crystaline, water soluble and colourless, which as Amy and Sarah mentioned is very different from Zinc chloride which is a white powder that is not soluble in water. But magnesium powder has been used in some mixtures for creating smokescreens. It reacts with other chlorinated chemicals to make smoke and magnesium chloride as the byproduct. But I can’t find anything that uses MgCl directly for the smoke. Hope this helps.

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 16 Jun 2012:

      This is not something I have any knowlage on – I could google to look it up but I think Sarah and Will have probably covered it for you

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