Tell us your school chemistry stories

[Welsh wheels]

I remember one time my chemistry tutor dropped a pencil sharpener into a very concentrated solution of hydrochloric acid. A pillar of fumes immediately started ascending from the container and we pupils started coughing and rushing for the door, followed by our tutor who threw the container as far away as he could. My tutor muttered something about the solution being more concentrated than he thought.

 

[ianrauk]

If only Vernon was still here... his chemistry stories were the stuff of legend.

 

[PeteXXX]

My chemistry teacher muttered the words a chemistry teacher should never utter....
"Be careful doing this, it could go wrong"

Chlorine gas in a gas jar, drop in a filter paper soaked in turpentine........



POOOF!!!!!!!!!!!

Mushroom clouds of little bits of black smut floating around the lab for the rest of the lesson

 

[Welsh wheels]

My chemistry teacher muttered the words a chemistry teacher should never utter....
"Be careful doing this, it could go wrong"

Chlorine gas in a gas jar, drop in a filter paper soaked in turpentine........



POOOF!!!!!!!!!!!

Mushroom clouds of little bits of black smut floating around the lab for the rest of the lesson

Sounds great....I bet teachers aren't allowed to do fun stuff like that these days!

 

[raleighnut]

Best fun was blowing as hard as I could up the gas line to put out as many Bunsen burners as possible.

 

[Drago]

Hydrogen. 5 litre ice cream tub. Glowing splint. Much screaming. Much detention.

 

[Welsh wheels]

Hydrogen. 5 litre ice cream tub. Glowing splint. Much screaming. Much detention.

Such fun

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

I remember having ''[marmoset's] interest has clearly been on other things this year'' in a report and, truth be told, he was definitely right. I remember filching a strip of magnesium once and then attempting to light it at home in an electric bar fire. It was only then that I learned that magnesium conducts electricity rather well....

 

[Drago]

It was my first experience of a mortar.

 

[raleighnut]

Mind you our teacher cutting a piece of Sodium that was just a little too big to be dropped in water was fun.

 

[User33236]

One I recall from high school physics was a 50:50 mixture of Chlorine gas and O2 in a glass syringe with the end plugged. Set of a camera flash beside it and the small explosion causes the plunger of the syringe to eject out of the top. Thing with our one was that the glass syringe exploded in all directions and the plunger rocketed out of the top taint out the fluorescent strip light above.

 

[keithmac]

Our first year A level Chemistry teacher used to tell us how they cleaned all the surfaces down with Benzene (bare hands) amongst other things in his younger days.

During the year we noticed he got progressively worse bumping into the tables etc and after summer break we had another teacher..

Presume he'd suffered from cumulative effects over the years and ours was his last class.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Mind you our teacher cutting a piece of Sodium that was just a little too big to be dropped in water was fun.

Oh-sod-it-um...

 

[Welsh wheels]

I remember having ''[marmoset's] interest has clearly been on other things this year'' in a report and, truth be told, he was definitely right. I remember filching a strip of magnesium once and then attempting to light it at home in an electric bar fire. It was only then that I learned that magnesium conducts electricity rather well....

Shocking thing to do

 

[Drago]

I vaguely recall setting up some fiendishly complex chemistry experiment then, as often happens, Lucifer took possession of me and somehow the Bunsen burner set fire to all the rubber buts connecting the glassware.