lookwhaticando Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Chemistry is easily one of the best subjects during your education. Certainly in mine. So much fun to be had - usually with fire and chemicals. A few key points during my secondary school years included the torching of a wooden work space in one particular class. Who'd have thought a Bunsen burner could do so much damage to a wooden work bench? Our little group of budding scientists (maniacs?) had managed to know our Bunsen over and set fire, briefly, to the work space we were standing at. It left a lovely burn mark about six inches in diameter which served as a permanent reminder as to what happens when you aim the Bunsen burner at a flammable material such as wood. The only sign of significant chemistry activity on this wood bench was the occasional chemical spill which had taken the edge of the shiny surface... and our big burn mark. In another incident, we managed to cause a fair amount of damage to some lab equipment... and our friends legs. During an experiment involving (yet again) a Bunsen burner, some water, a Pyrex glass, a thermometer and various other stuff... we managed to knock the Pyrex glass from atop the gauze it was sitting on, where it was being heated by the burner. The rush of hot water splashed over the edge of the work space and neatly onto our friends unsuspecting legs. We'll come back to him... Knocking the Pyrex off it's perch smashed it, naturally. We were told lab stuff like that wasn't cheap... To make matters worse, one of us (not me) had decided we needed to cool the glass thermometer down. The thermometer had just come from water which was boiling (it was reading about 75c) - so as you can imagine, it didn't take too kindly to being put under the cold water. It broke into three or four pieces. Apparently thermometers like that aren't cheap either. Back to our groupie... ... he had had his trousers removed and he was now sitting, trouser-less, with his feet in a tub of water (cold, one assumes) in the lab supply cupboard - being tended to by our 50-odd year old female chemistry teacher. She couldn't shut the door, though, because she had a class to watch over... so he was sat there, essentially in full view of the entire classroom. Being a mixed class, he was mildly embarrassed. Our final episode was to light a gas tap. That was probably rather silly of us, looking back... but a friend with a lighter decided to light a partially opened gas tap. Made for an impressive flame - several inches beyond the work bench, as you'd expect. Anyone else got any good Chemistry stories?
The People's Hero Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 The lighting of the gas tap was a classic the first few times, but soon became extremely tiresome. We actually had a mini-explosion of some type during my GCSE class, I'm struggling to remember the details of it, but quite a lot of stuff was broken. Needless to say, I WASN'T involved.
Daggers Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 I covered a Yr 7 girl with boiling water, exploded a lump of molten Sodium so that it hit a ceiling fan and splattered across a room and blown up a fume cupboard when my Chlorine factory flame went out and water got sucked through the system from the water pump. I would point out that this has nothing to do with my current state of unemployment
The People's Hero Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 I played against my Chemistry teacher in this quiz league thing my local pub plays in. I got all my chemistry questions right. He was so proud of me. 2 lucky guesses
Daggers Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 I played against my Chemistry teacher in this quiz league thing my local pub plays in. I got all my chemistry questions right. He was so proud of me. 2 lucky guesses One of them has to be "What chemical element has the symbol Pb?" - for some reason, pub quizes love Lead!
surrifox Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 measuring changes in pressure from a pump using a U-tube full of mercury (you can probably imagine the result)- I guess that would have been Physics though. Burning magnesium (or pretty much anything ) in pure oxygen in a bell jar and any activities involving sodium or phosporus usually had the school ringed in flashing blue lights
Steven Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 We had a fellow pupil make and carry around in his briefcase, TNT.
Flynny Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Secondary school chemistry is indeed excellent for that kind of thng, but doing it at AS is a pain in the arse. Only decent thing I've done this year is heat a test tube so vigourously that the bottom of it half melted and fell off.
Daggers Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Health and Safety legislation doesn't exist in Colombia...I got to do whatever I wanted. The size of some of our explosions were seriously fantastic. Also, I did a thermite reaction with contents that would have filled a wheelbarrow, that was amazing. We had to evacuate a school in Essex once, not my fault, again because of Chlorine. My mate managed to blanket the entire third floor in the stuff. Not one person forgot the key properties of Group 7 elements in that years GCSE
Daggers Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Ha! This is all starting to come back now... Two members of the department at one school painted a thin layer of nitro over one guys floor and blackboard. Thus, when he walked in, there was a constant cracking with each footfall and chalk stroke ~ and he did the entire class pretending not to notice
The People's Hero Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 One of them has to be "What chemical element has the symbol Pb?" - for some reason, pub quizes love Lead! No... P. I got it though - Phosphorous!
lookwhaticando Posted 8 January 2007 Author Posted 8 January 2007 Au and Ag are popular with pop quizzes too.
Dr The Singh Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 I did a degree in chemistry, which I enjoyed, it's quite technical and organic chemistry is like cooking but with puzzles. Also worked as a rsearch chemist for a few years and absolutely hated it, I spent 90% of my time doing column chromatography extracting the drugs\chemicals I produced!!
Daggers Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 I spent 90% of my time doing column chromatography extracting the drugs I produced!! Got any left?
Dr The Singh Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Got any left? Non of them are sexual enhancing or sexual performance enhancing though????
Leonisco Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Chemistry is great! :thumbsup: The best one is tipping copper oxide down a bunsen burner so the flame goes green. I also know a guy who once nicked a lump of potassium from his school-science block and decided to lob it down one of the school toilets. I think you can probably guess what happened after that.
lookwhaticando Posted 8 January 2007 Author Posted 8 January 2007 Chemistry is great! :thumbsup: The best one is tipping copper oxide down a bunsen burner so the flame goes green. I also know a guy who once nicked a lump of potassium from his school-science block and decided to lob it down one of the school toilets. I think you can probably guess what happened after that. Potassium and the likes are brilliant. They never let us play with Rubidium, Cesium or Francium - for obvious reasons. We did however see a recorded demo of what happens when a tiny piece of one of the above elements was dropped in a two litre pyrex trough. I forget which element it was, but it shattered the trough in an instant. The tiny little blob of stuff hit the water and maybe two seconds later the trough had exploded and the water was everywhere. God I wish I had some of that stuff to play with.
Suffolk_fox Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 The lesson which burnt down part of my school was in the Metalwork room... Some of the lads had drained the fuel from a motorbike, and left it in an open vessel. 2 other lads thought it would be great to have a sword fight with two lengths of metal! Ooooh, look at the pretty sparks as the 'swords' clash.... WOOOOMPH!!! (Not me though, I was in Social Studies...)
lookwhaticando Posted 8 January 2007 Author Posted 8 January 2007 (Not me though, I was in Social Studies...) So you were the one analysing what they did and why, and how society should deal with such special talents?
Flynny Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Potassium and the likes are brilliant. They never let us play with Rubidium, Cesium or Francium - for obvious reasons. We did however see a recorded demo of what happens when a tiny piece of one of the above elements was dropped in a two litre pyrex trough. I forget which element it was, but it shattered the trough in an instant. The tiny little blob of stuff hit the water and maybe two seconds later the trough had exploded and the water was everywhere. God I wish I had some of that stuff to play with. It'd have been Rubidium, Caesium is a liquid and there's not more than a kilo of Francium on the planet.
lookwhaticando Posted 8 January 2007 Author Posted 8 January 2007 It'd have been Rubidium, Caesium is a liquid and there's not more than a kilo of Francium on the planet. I didn't bother to remember the finer details, because I never expected to get my hands on any of the elements one could use. But yes... whatever it was, worked like magic. It's the stuff of dreams.
cisono Posted 8 January 2007 Posted 8 January 2007 Chemistry is not brilliant then, it's explosive...
lookwhaticando Posted 8 January 2007 Author Posted 8 January 2007 It's not brilliant when you have a shit teacher I can imagine. I was lucky. :D :smile: Chemistry is not brilliant then, it's explosive... A really good chemistry class is both.
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