You will need:
- baking powder (NaHCO₃)
- icing sugar
- sand
- methylated spirits
- heat mat
- matches

Mix one teaspoon of baking powder with 3 teaspoons of icing sugar.
Shape the sand into a pile as shown on the right. You may wish to put the sand in a beaker.

Pour methylated spirits onto the pile.

Place a small sample of the baking powder/icing sugar mixture on top of the pile of sand and light the methylated spirits.

The end result is very spectacular.

Click to see the reaction.

Click to see a 1 Mb video

Safety notes

Once the fire is going do not add any more methylated spirits.

As the icing sugar burns it melts. Before it solidifies it traps air bubbles producing a column of carbon which is pushed upwards by the bubbles of gas trapped in the base of the column. Carbon dioxide is the gas produced when NaHCO₃ is heated. The methylated spirits provides the heat source to burn the sugar and decompose the baking powder to produce carbon dioxide according to the equation below.