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Chemistry Horror Stories (1 Viewer)

jm1234567890

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Originally posted by tina_goes_doo


And we have a nice little waste jar in our lab too. Everything goes into it and it is now a nice suspension of oily grease, some indistict liquid, and a chucky goo on the bottom. It has a sick shade of orange too from some guys pouring a whole bottle of methyl orange into it.

isn't dangerous to put all the waste chemicals into the same jar?
 

yulia

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Originally posted by jm1234567890
isn't dangerous to put all the waste chemicals into the same jar?
We have one of those waste jars, however ours gets emptied onto the flower garden in the senior quadrangle - which is pretty much in the middle, near where everyone eats (some people sit around it/on it). Mmmmm chemical lunch.
 

tina_goes_doo

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Originally posted by jm1234567890
isn't dangerous to put all the waste chemicals into the same jar?
Yeah our teacher is starting to stop us from using it. He said that waste jar has to last us until the end of July when the people come to collect it.

Considering how the other chem class' waste jar looks like there's only water in it, i think our teacher is kinda sorta right. ^_^
 

charmed_cuties

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well my chemistry class is pretty safe, but hey i've had my accidents of dropping test tubes and spilling but nothing very biggie, but there was this 1 time when we were making esters and my friend was shaking the stopper thing with the ester inside, the stopper popped up and the pressure of the ester flew into her eyes. she had to rinse out her eye for more than 15 minutes
 

charmed_cuties

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another 1 was bak in yr 10 wen the class was making either soap or cream (well i dunnoe, too long). well n e ways the boys were always together in their group of 4 (majority of the people in the class were girls) well n e ways wen they had to heat the substances, one guy added oil and it was heated with the bunsen burner, well out of nowhere flames just started cuming from their experiment. well the people around them had to literally move away, coz the flame was so big (in fact it burnt the ceiling and now there is a black patch)
well the teacher wasn't so happy with the outcome of the experiment, and they had to just sit around or look on!
 

tina_goes_doo

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Ok new thing happened today. There was a cockroach running around in the lab. Now i'm not just taking about ye' wee lil' roachie...that was a fat beast! The guys saw it and stepped on it, but not too hard so that i was still squirming and (somewhat) in the same shape.

The the teacher then said something that sealed its fate:
"...can someone get out a bunsen burner?"

Needless to say, the guys were eager. Using tongs (no safety googles too i might add :) ), they picked up the roach and.........COOKED IT! Seriously it was squirming and sparking. It smelt like burning hair! Charcoalled roach - YUM YUM!

And then this guy (let's just call him George....no, CECIL! Cecil's a sweet-ass name!), was dared to eat it.... not just swallow, CRUNCH it too!

Let's just say Cecil compared it to eating one of the new 'Starburst Squirts', just crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside...a charcoal flavour but sort of sweet like there was a bit of sugar with it.

I asked Cecil if he would do it again.

He replied yes! >_<
 

yulia

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lol. My friend insists there's nothing really wrong with eating cockroaches/insects/maggots, he says they're just protein. But when I ask if HE'D eat one...he replies with an "As if".
 

tristan88

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Last term, we were doing a carbon chemistry unit in science. The experiment involved reacting calcium carbide with water, which gives off ethyne.

Ethyne and oxygen were pumped into the gas jar under water and the jar was sealed. The teacher then proceeded to take off the lid of the gas jar and place a match inside. Before the match had even landed inside, it had already ignited and exploded sending glass to the back of the classroom. Worst part was the noise, really loud.
I was sitting in the front row, but ducked for cover just in time. :) Someone in the third row suffered a minor cut.

They found out that this was a new batch of calcium carbide, a lot stronger than the previous batches which were some 15 years old.
 

fashionista

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i remember once in yr 8 we were doing somethign ha involved acid goin in one tube and water coming out another..attached to a condenser thing (i have a vague recollection of it) anyway me and my friend were getting way bored because we had to watch acid boil or something along the lines of that so we were sitting there, heads leaning on our hands and falling asleep and then the tubing snaps off and coats us in liquid. we thought it was acid so we screamed and panicked like losers only to find out it was water.
 

Slidey

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I was doing a prac exam on finding out what an uknown solution was or somesuch. Anyway, I had a test tube full of concentrated HCl... and I noticed a crack yelled "oh shit", dropped the test tube and it shattered a few seconds later. I got an estimate for that one because there was 10 minutes left in the period and the acid was all over my paper and stuff chemicals and stuff. Didn't get any on me, though.
 

benthejack

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yeah we had a dropkick for a chem teacher lastyear who decided to show us sodium reacting with water....... big glass tank with water in it.. sodium fizzez whizzes around a bit... hits the side of the tank.. ummm yeah it caused a bit of a bang and a rather large hole in the tank!!!
 

Jezzabelle

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i had a lovely prac group. simon, glenn and i.

simon is intelligent, but doesnt follow instuctions , the type to just dive in and not read a manual. (eg. he studied all his prelim physics/chem ALONG with his HSC work for the trials (and did the same for all subjets i guess) cos he doesnt pay attention and thought they assessed yr11 and 12.. he rings my mate up 10pm night before AOS exam and asks wat does he have to know (its tim winton and hamlet and frontline?).. uhh no-) anyways i think i have established his character

Glenn. is away from class (do to hockey/baseball/softball....) more than he is in it, doesnt really give a stuff anyway cos he plans on sitting on a bench in a US baseball team for 2 years, making a few million, and coming back to marry a gorgeous Australian. So he just likes experiment time cos it means he can play with a box (or several) of matchs, you know,lighting them and putting them inhis mouth etc, or even filling the eye dropper with acid and firing it at us...

so needless to say, i end up trying to get the esperiment happening, and some days i get lazy and ask them to set it up... and those days... without fail... the experiment blows up (we had ceiling height flames with esters) or if there is an exspesive piece of equipment the teaches begs us to be careful with, simon will break it.... every single experiment i did in senior chemistry was a disaster story !! LOL

at least it kept things interesting
 

Sphyx

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i love my class to death..

this one time we decided to fill and empty garbage bag with methane gas from our gas tap on the bench. so we filled it until it was about 75% full then lit it. a quite nice pyrotechnical dysplay if it can be called that. it was awesome fun an ended up with half of the school staring out the window wondering why the year 11 kids are allowed to play with fire.
 

taxman

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Nothing too dangerous at our school...aside from this massive explosion that happened in the labs like 10 years ago or something which killed two kids.

Worst thing that happened in my class was when I broke eight test tubes. I put the pile of test tubes lying flat on the table then turned around to light the bunsen...then I heard one smash after the other...turned around and watched three more test tubes smash on the floor. I saved the last one, but straight after I finished heating it, I put it under cold water and the bottom exploded out. Whoops. My teacher found it hilarious. Whenever there's a kid that walks into the room he points me out and says "See your school captain over there? He once broke eight test tubes in one day. Eight test tubes...hahahaha."

I hate test tubes.
 

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