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otolith
19,345 posts
73 months
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Use Psychology said: Life Saab Itch said: How? Share the secret. Please. iron oxide and aluminium powder, stoichiometric mixture so it burns properly. usually use a short length of magnesium metal to ignite. According to my old A-level chemistry teacher, if you wish to demonstrate this to a class but have run out of iron oxide, substituting copper oxide is A Very Bad Idea You Only Do Once. He was a proper chemistry teacher - his take on the alkali metals demonstration damaged a desk and half a shelf of books, and he could tell you what phosgene poisoning feels like and how close he got to killing himself with tetracarbonyl nickel 
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NSFW
1,402 posts
59 months
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I have 2 to add to this colaboration...
1/ Whilst about 14/15 in Netly Park, Southampton at a bus rally with my folks (Exciting life) a friend and myself went to the waters edge, a beach. I went into the water in my shorts being a hot summers day and we thought it would be a good idea to play dodgeball - With stones. Que one smaking me right in the middle of the forehead. I had never seen so much blood! Just like someone had turned a tap on, so off we walk through the bus rally hands over head, blinded by blood being led by a meek friend and onlookers asking if I was ok. I was, and got an ice lolly for my stupidity iirc.
2/ Simple, 12 YO... Bike, speed on pavement, pondering what would happen if foot went in spokes at speed = Me on floor, broken thumb and a sore foot! Flew for what felt like ages!
Also have the beans on the fire and the near death of my friends dad's Herald convertible due to other things being placed on a fire.
Oh, yeah! Don't go camping with 5 other 15 year olds using the old 'I'm staying at his house' trick, with rain, wind and no tent on the south downs looking for somewhere to sleep. Ended up in a carpet skip behind a carpet shop after a LONG trek back to civilisation.
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AJS-
9,993 posts
105 months
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I did a lot of ground breaking experimentation into whether or not petrol burns, which wasn't so well known in the early 1990s. Once I had established that it does, I did further testing into it's effects on dried grass, trees, sheds, and my father's temperament, all of which tended to ignite dramatically then subside and smoulder for some time. After a summer of thorough investigation our house looked like this  And I could conclude at the 95% level that petrol was indeed flammable.
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DBSV8
4,206 posts
107 months
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2 large boxs of matches , remove match heads , grind into powder , place contents in metal tube and drill a small hole at 90 degrees while in metal work class . drop in a small ball bearing and light . then watch ball bearing make a nice hole in the science block window 4o feet away ...run like hell
oh and not advisable to come down stairs on a space hopper ....at 4 years old
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MK1 GIT
133 posts
23 months
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cossey said: 2. Made a bet with the retired chemistry teacher who was covering whilst our normal teacher was on maternity leave that we could make explosives quite easily using only the ingredients in the lab and that would be a suitable practical lesson. He rather naively agreed expecting nothing more than some gunpowder. We split into groups and as expected most groups went for the traditional carbon/sulfur/potassium nitrate route. We though decided that plastique would be far more fun and after two industrious hours we had finished. on the bench it made a pretty impressive bang so I thought that it would be a good idea to fill the lock on the door with it. the teacher and the rest of the class saw too late and dived for the floor as a shouted "FIRE IN THE HOLE" and threw myself behind a bench as the door and a section of wall was blown out into the hall way. It took a month to get the class room rebuilt. That made me genuinely laugh his morning.
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Use Psychology
9,790 posts
61 months
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otolith said: According to my old A-level chemistry teacher, if you wish to demonstrate this to a class but have run out of iron oxide, substituting copper oxide is A Very Bad Idea You Only Do Once. He was a proper chemistry teacher - his take on the alkali metals demonstration damaged a desk and half a shelf of books, and he could tell you what phosgene poisoning feels like and how close he got to killing himself with tetracarbonyl nickel haha. nickel tetracarbonyl is something I will never go anywhere near. however we did have an exciting time at work yesterday when one my students plonked a flask with about 2 grams of potassium metal straight into our base bath (mixture of isopropyl alcohol + KOH). obviouly the entire (25 L!) bath caught fire. slammed the lid down quickly and waited for the potassium to die.
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Use Psychology
9,790 posts
61 months
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except that sadly i'm not sure somebody made plastic explosives in a chemistry lesson.
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doogz
18,667 posts
56 months
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Use Psychology said: except that sadly i'm not sure somebody made plastic explosives in a chemistry lesson. Some of these tales do seem a bit hard to believe.
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The Beaver King
3,551 posts
64 months
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Two that spring to mind for me: 1) At 16, buying 1kg of Iron Oxide, 1kg of Aluminimum Powder and a metre of Magnesium ribbon. My parents had gone on holiday for the week and I decided (with some persuasion from friends) to construct a small thermite production facility in the kitchen. Had some crack fun and thought I'd got away with it when my parents got home. Within 2 hours they had clocked the large scorch marks in the lawn and noticed the whole kitchen had a fine film of orange dust. That did not go well. 2) Building a potato cannon with some mates. Probably the most frightening thing we ever did as it was actually quite capable of killing someone. It was a proper experiment though, testing all different types of propellant. Spar's own brand hair spray works very well, as does oxy-acetylene... We must have spent a month continuously improving the design, including a remote firing switch which consisted of a electric lighter spark thing, 2 metres of single core wire and a spark plug. Just found some of the videos of Youtube: Spud Gun FunSpud Gun Fun 2Oh dear, we were so stupid...
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Buzz word
1,854 posts
78 months
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otolith said: According to my old A-level chemistry teacher, if you wish to demonstrate this to a class but have run out of iron oxide, substituting copper oxide is A Very Bad Idea You Only Do Once. He was a proper chemistry teacher - his take on the alkali metals demonstration damaged a desk and half a shelf of books, and he could tell you what phosgene poisoning feels like and how close he got to killing himself with tetracarbonyl nickel Well that poses a load of questions that I feel compelled to find out about but the inferance is could kill me.
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schmalex
Original Poster
8,658 posts
75 months
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Gene Simmons said: schmalex said: When 12 at Bishop Wordsworth School in Salisbury,  I went to that school. What year are you talking about? Eighties? Nineties? Before either ;-) I was there from 1985 to 1988
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motco
4,745 posts
115 months
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Captain Spoons said: Couple of highlights mainly involving fire and explosions, turning a water pistol into a flame thrower by filling with meths with a lighter sellotaped to the barrel- all very impressive until the plastic began to melt and a nice little fireball to finish things off!! And a nice long summer holiday when the highlight was finding some railway charges in one of the sheds by the local railway- over a 100 to muck about with! Think it took about 20 to bring down a nice big tree in my mates garden- parents not impressed, we on the other hand were VERY impressed The trouble with meths is that the flame is non-luminous and you can have a hand on fire without seeing it. You soon know it though...
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keslake
311 posts
75 months
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Christ, dunno where to start here !
Obvious ones that spring to mind are:-
Being about 8yrs old and my best friend received one of those Chemistry sets you used to see in toy shops
50 experiments etc, various chemicals, iron filings, bunson burner and so forth.
Mixed up as many of the various chems we could, put them in a test tube, placed cork in the top
then held over the bunson burner.
Concoction soon blew cork out of tube and deposited a fair amount over his Lounge ceiling, the rest just continiued to
bubble out at an alarming rate....imagine expanding foam style.
Promptly decided i had to go home for tea before his Dad came home from work:-)
There was playing fields with a Football pitch behind our houses where we spent many a day during summer holidays
In those days the Groundsman used to mark the lines for the footy pitch using some kind of creosote.
Boys being boys we had our box of Swan vestas matches on us and decided to see if it was flammable.
Flames soon extended half way round the pitch and fire engines turned up.....was time for my tea again.
Going to London with a Red bus rover card and throwing eggs off of tower bridge onto a pleasure boat full of people.
Above friend placing a very large magnet onto the screen of his Dad's new colour TV....ouch.
Numerous times being caught in peoples gardens scrumping or collecting birds eggs.
Ah the joys of childhood.
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aclivity
3,538 posts
57 months
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Remembered another one this morning - when I decided to see if you could drill a hole in a plastic bag with a Black & Decker drill.
Ended up with my hand wrapped around the drill bit, held fast by screwed up plastic. If I recall correctly, my left hand was attached to the plastic bag, my right hand had hold of the power switch. As it started to hurt, all I could think of doing was to keep pushing the switch.
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Sonic
2,964 posts
76 months
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Langy996TT said: Found an unused shotgun cartrige in my dads garage. Me and my wee cousin went into the shed, put it in a vice and used a large nail as a firing pin. The explosion, noise and smoke was horrendous and in hindsight we were lucky not to blow our faces off....instead the projectiles went through the side of the shed and smashed two glass panels in the adjacent greenhouse.
Needless to say my dad was unimpressed, still gives me a shiver thinking about what could have happened to be honest, obviously not too much at the time though as shortly afterwards set my wee cousins shoes on fire with a can of petrol that went rouge...the spout of the can then caught fire, wouldn't blow out of course, i paniced, kicked it as hard as i could - result, my shoes also on fire and half the back garden alight with all the already lit petrol that had flown out the can. Mum came running out to see a scene like something out of platoon.
Again, this did not go down well. Ah that reminds me of when i used to live in the Forest of Dean growing up - me and a friend found what i now know to be live shotgun cartridges down by a stream in the forest. I knew we shouldn't be playing with them, even back then, but he was insistent they'd provide a cool "bang", so preceded to bang the firing pin against a sharp rock, in the hope of setting it off, with the business end pointing into his face. How one didn't go off and blow his face into pieces i have no idea, but taking a couple of the cartridges back home to my parents certainly got a few peoples attention and ultimately ended up with the police taking possession of the cartridges and going back to the stream to search for any remaining. otolith said: Use Psychology said: Life Saab Itch said: How? Share the secret. Please. iron oxide and aluminium powder, stoichiometric mixture so it burns properly. usually use a short length of magnesium metal to ignite. According to my old A-level chemistry teacher, if you wish to demonstrate this to a class but have run out of iron oxide, substituting copper oxide is A Very Bad Idea You Only Do Once. He was a proper chemistry teacher - his take on the alkali metals demonstration damaged a desk and half a shelf of books, and he could tell you what phosgene poisoning feels like and how close he got to killing himself with tetracarbonyl nickel Reminds me of my old piano teacher who was a chemist before he retired. He went about explaining how i should make nitrogen triiodide...
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Faust66
784 posts
34 months
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Another tale from my misspent youth.
Party poppers... not really that exciting to a 13 year old boy with strong Pyromaniac tendencies; it was decided that we’d spice ‘em up a bit.
“Ah, but what are the necessary ingredients?” I hear you ask.
Scrape the powder off a few sparklers (you want to do this CAREFULLY if you value your eyebrows/hands/dad's garage). Steal a load of magnesium ribbon from the school chemistry lab. De-head a few boxes of non safety matches and grind into powder.
Take one party popper; remove the cardboard cover, the pull out all the paper streamers. You then want to pack a load of match-head powder around the wee charge that sets the popper off. Next, pack the plastic body of the item with magnesium ribbon cut into small sections, the sparkler powder and the rest of the matches. Don’t pack it to tight, mind... the replace the cardboard cover.
Hold the party popper as normal and pull the string.
If you’ve got the recipe ‘right’ an amusingly large flame approx 2 – 4 feet long (IIRC) will emerge. You need to drop the plastic after about 2 seconds or it tends to melt to your hand. As my friend/partner in crime James Blackmore found out to his cost.
Mind you, his special trick was to climb onto the roof of his house and drop live shotgun shells down the chimney. The resulting FLUUMMFF noise when they ignited on the coal fire apparently it made his mum rather agitated. We also used to set firework rockets off via said chimney... its remarkable how angry this made his dad.
Sometimes I think it’s a miracle that I made it through childhood only slightly singed.
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mel
9,741 posts
144 months
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The best way to pack the Sodium Chlorite impregnated news paper into a can for weed killer bombs is not by using a flint.
Pidgeons shot with air rifles, then gutted and roasted over a camp fire, probably will give you food poisoning.
If you take the bulb out your bedside lamp then join the two brass pins with a bit of wire, you will not be able to make your own light bulb but instead the entire house will go dark.
While the idea of burning a big cock onto a corn field by drawing it out in petrol so that it can be seen by planes sounds funny, the reality it that you end up burning an entire corn field that can indeed be seen by planes.
When playing "hide behind the piece of corrugated iron sheet while everyone else throws stones at you" stop throwing stones when the kid down the road pops his head up above the sheet.
Shooting the kid over the road in the arse with an air rifle cannot be justified simply because he was being horrible to your mate.
125cc motocross bikes can indeed outrun police ford escorts even when 2 up. However they will notice the blue light on the ambulance an hour later and get you then.
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sleep envy
59,281 posts
118 months
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aclivity said: The most stupid one, and potentially deadly, was when I was about 18. Went up to Kirkby Lonsdale with my then girlfriend, walked along the river a bit. She had stopped to look into the water, was crouched down by the side of the river. I was quite a few yards ahead, so I thought I would chuck a stone into the water in front of her to attract her attention. A half brick sized stone was right there ... I threw it, underarm, in a perfect arc. As it flew, I realised my aim was a bit off ... I shouted, she looked up just as the rock hit her on the head. I honestly thought I had killed her, as I ran back and she was lying on the floor. She survived, if a little woozily for a couple of hours!  that's a cracker!
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Ponk
991 posts
61 months
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otolith said: Use Psychology said: Life Saab Itch said: How? Share the secret. Please. iron oxide and aluminium powder, stoichiometric mixture so it burns properly. usually use a short length of magnesium metal to ignite. According to my old A-level chemistry teacher, if you wish to demonstrate this to a class but have run out of iron oxide, substituting copper oxide is A Very Bad Idea You Only Do Once. He was a proper chemistry teacher - his take on the alkali metals demonstration damaged a desk and half a shelf of books, and he could tell you what phosgene poisoning feels like and how close he got to killing himself with tetracarbonyl nickel Sadly I don't think there are many teachers left like this. I remember my Physics teacher singing the ceiling tiles whilst demonstrating why you shouldn't put water on a chip pan fire. Not to mention discharging a pretty massive capacitor (circa 4" diameter and perhaps 8" tall) using a 100g weight. 
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C.A.R.
1,272 posts
57 months
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The Beaver King said: 2) Building a potato cannon with some mates. Probably the most frightening thing we ever did as it was actually quite capable of killing someone. It was a proper experiment though, testing all different types of propellant. Spar's own brand hair spray works very well, as does oxy-acetylene...
We must have spent a month continuously improving the design, including a remote firing switch which consisted of a electric lighter spark thing, 2 metres of single core wire and a spark plug.
Oh dear, we were so stupid... Glad that these 'spud gun' things were common. When at secondary school me and a few mates decided to build one, then test it in the school field at the end of the day. We found using an electric lighter spark was hit-and-miss, often you stood there clicking away with it until it suddenly fired. Anyway, Introduce the curiousity of our woodwork teacher into the equation. 1 week later, he has his own spud cannon. Nothing particularly exciting, but better built than ours. It was the projectile which was more interesting. With access to a lathe and a lump of aluminium he made a cylindrical 'missile' with a pointed brass tip. We tested it in the same playing field after school one night, nearly killing a kid who crossed the field every day on his way home from school. The projectile buried itself about half a foot in the ground when it landed. We then decided to shoot an old fridge with it. The 'missile' went through the front of the fridge and penetrated the other side. Best teacher ever.
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