Exactly right

Comments (16)

1. True story: I ended up in hospital with third degree burns after a chemistry set play session.

   1. And I set fire to the school chemistry lab when making rocket fuels, but we both survived…

2. I was educated at a Steiner school full of anthroposophical woo. Because the teachers were all homeopaths they had no idea how dangerous things were. I remember one teacher taking a teaspoon full of potassium cyanide out of a very rusty old tin and gleefully saying ‘we’ve enough here to kill off the whole school’. Oh, the fun we had. I learned a great dal about science there, often unsupervised, making my own equipment in a lab straight outta Hogwarts. Me and nitrogen tri-iodide… Happy days.

   1. I remember that stuff! Used to throw it on the ground for effect…

3. We used to scatter it on the playground for the tinies to run around on.

   1. You were also an evil child, then…

      1. I suspect when Cromercrox wrote “we”, he meant himself plus Croxes Minor and Minima.

   2. Bob- this was long before Crox Minor and Minima were engendered. Make of that what you will.

4. Me? Evil? Pure as the drIven slush.

5. I never had a chemistry set but that didn’t stop me or my friends from building bombs ,flamethrowers and other weapons of mass destruction. When I was at boarding school one of my friends stripped the flesh off a dead rat to obtain the skeleton by dumping it in a bucket full of household bleach mixed with toilet cleaner. We put it out on the roof to avoid chocking on the chlorine fumes that poured off.

6. I think kids who grow up on farms still enjoy feeling that the whole world is their chemistry set. The things that can be done with literal tonnes of potato starch, or a bit of tar, or caustic soda. Of course, my cousin did blow the palm off his hand making some kind of improvised bomb…

   Possibly *actual* chemistry sets are the better option.

7. The universe will allow you to maim or kill yourself in all sorts of interesting and disgusting ways, if you really want to. The chemistry sets and homemade gunpowder of generations past are the least of them. Just look at the meth synthesis that some kids today attempt. Anhydrous ammonia? Pressurized reactions? And removing the lithium metal from those energizer batteries can get exiting.

8. The chemistry sets we had as kids, back in the 60’s, were pretty lame, but we still managed to make gunpowder with things we scrounged here and there. At least some drug stores in California would sell kids assorted chemicals.

   My one attempt at nitrogen tri-iodide wasn’t worth a damn, though.

   Anyone who waxes nostalgic about their teenage misadventures with chemistry would enjoy Oliver Sacks’ “Uncle Tungsten”, particularly the chapter “Stinks and Bangs.”

   1. That is one of my favourite books! I wish I had lived just a decade earlier…

9. I once had a (chemically illiterate) Health and Safety officer ask me during a meeting at work: “do you have to use so many chemicals?”.

   I work in the pharmaceutical industry. As a synthetic chemist. In a chemistry lab. I replied that chemicals, and quite a few of them, were fairly necessary.

   To be fair to the poor bloke, he did mean “dangerous chemicals”, but that wasn’t what he said. That comment may have lived with him for a while…although I’m almost completely innocent of mentioning it. Almost.

   Louis

10. Brilliant pic!

    I gave up “practical chemistry” when I exploded myself (for the second time) with some HMTD. It’s a wonder I still have all my digits.

    The whole “terrorism” thing happened not long after that, so it’s probably a good job I quit when I did. Bloody terrorists spoiling all the fun…

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