On 14/2/04 7:16 am, in article
[email protected], "vernon
levy" <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> What kind of things were you talking about being dismissable offences? Anything interesting I
>> should try out?
>
> Funniliy enough the top offender uses conc. ammonia and iodine to make ammonium triodide, an
> unstable explosive....small quantities (lentil sized) is manageable but I like chemistry in bucket
> quantities
It certainly makes things go with a bang. A teaspoon sized pile going up during a lesson (it had
been left on top of a cupboard to dry and is unstable above 25C or under pressure) made one hell of
a noise. ;-)
This was some time ago. We also did things like drop sodium in conc nitric acid (in a beaker in a
trough of water). It blew the bottom out of the beaker.
An inch cube of sodium in a fire bucket certainly teaches respect for chemicals in quantity,
something the poxy little piece of fizzy lithium doesn't do.
Normal party balloons full of hydrogen/oxygen are entertaining (outside).
Lots of other fun things too.. most of which are probably thought of as being too dangerous. It is
the danger that teaches respect.
> A lot of authorities ban anything that leads to explosions which for me eliminated the combustion
> of gallon quantity stiochometric mixes of oxygen and gaseous alkanes out in the playing fields, a
> lot of the organic chemicals and some inorganic stock was banned.
How to kill off enthusiasm for science..
> We once got a major bollocking because our sandwiches shared fridge space with pickled rats and
> other biolocical specimens. Our arguments that it boosted our immune systems was not well received
> by the po faced jobsworth.
We got told off for having an out of date bottle in our fridge. The reasoning was that it would
degenerate into dangerous compounds. The bottle originally contained 100 vol hydrogen peroxide.
At the same time I was told off for having an unlabled bottle of a blue coloured solution for a
particular protocol. So I labelled it 'Blue protocol solution' and everyone was happy. Go figure!
..d