A Can of Silly String?

Remember this gooey stuff that you'd spray while imitating that it's coming out of your nose? I do and had a lot of laughs with it. Today, however, it is being used by soldiers in Iraq to help detect explosive trip wires. Soldiers spray them into a house as they go door to door sweeping neighborhoods. If the stuff falls to the ground, their are no trip wires. If it lands on something, it's too light to trip the wires and lets the soldiers know the place is booby-trapped.

A mother of a soldier is collecting cans of the stuff to send to other soldiers.

You can go read the whole story here.