Note that while naphthalene is clearly labelled as a poison, there atre lots of household poisons like this. Keep the mothballs away from pets and small children, and if you are under about 14, get a safe adult to advise you on where to leave the jar and where to store the mothballs.
Ready to start, and
after one day in the sun.
You need a pack of mothballs from the supermarket, a clean
jar with a tight lid, a warm or sunny place to leave the jar, and two weeks or
more.
Naphthalene is flammable when heated, but
in a sealed container like this, it
is safe enough. The solid naphthalene sublimes, which means it changes to a vapour without melting, and later, it
condenses on a cooler part of the jar, away from the sunlight. You will see
results after the first day, but really nice crystals can take as much as a
month. This works well on a north-facing window-sill, but mine was just left on
a north-facing deck, and it worked just fine.
Put the mothballs in the jar, tighten the lid, and leave it
in a safe sunny place, away from wind, pets and stray animals including younger
children. As the packaging says, naphthalene is a household poison: don’t
touch, smell or taste it—and keep the lid on! It is safe enough, in sensible
hands: just be careful. Don’t dispose of it, because it lasts for years.
How safe is naphthalene?
Julius
Caesar’s last breath
On the Ides of March, 44 BCE, Julius Caesar took his last
breath, expired and expired. Between then and now, the air molecules he
breathed out in his last breath have spread and mixed in the atmosphere. One
estimate I have seen suggests that on average, every breath we take contains
1.3 molecules from Caesar’s last breath. Play with this.
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