In Chemistry at School in the year before we made our final subject choices (3rd/4th year in old money) our Chem Teacher was showing how to do some chemical reaction thing and to grow Ammonia on a piece of filter paper (from what little I remember, the man was a complete ar$e)... he showed the class and then proceeded to check whether it actually was Ammonia by inhaling deeply over it.... cue his eyes streaming and him being short of breath and leaving the room, and leaving us alone... not a wise move.
We soon got bored of talking amongst ourselves and started doing silly things... my contribution to this was to pull the gas hose from the base my Bunsen Burner and light the rubber, then turning the gas on and have my own mini flame thrower controlled by the gas tap.
It was most impressive and we were all laughing when suddenly someone turned the gas tap on full and the flame shot out quite far... in fact it was far enough to set some posters on the wall alight...
We managed to save the main A2 poster (well, a piece about A4 in size remained uncharred and *almost* fully legible) but were struggling to get rid of the burning smell when the teacher returned. Fortunately he couldn't see much, or smelkl much after his little dabble with pure Ammonia, so we managed to get out of class without being discovered.
Could have been a bit of a disaster though.


