Be Excellent To Each Other

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with. Dunno what our policy is regarding near-empty link posts, but fuck it, this site is well worth breaking all the rules for.

Anything that burns water on contact is pretty awesome. Where can we get some of this stuff?

Now there's a Darwin Award in the making.

I'll have a flick through the catalogue I have here.

Awesome!

I particularly like the part that says one of the flammable materials is test engineers.

From an older article where he discusses how dangerous it can be to handle compounds with lots of nitrogen atoms (for non-chemists, they have a tendency to form nitrogen gas, which is very stable, and the excess bonding energy released when that happens is converted into "shrapnel and loud noises" as he puts it. The more nitrogen atoms, the bigger the bang.)

Science is best.

No.

Brilliant.

I used to hook batteries up to salt-water in my kitchen as a young'un, until a suitably sized cloud of chlorine hung in the air. Green gas is fascinating when you're little. And now, too, but now I know it's probably a bad idea to do this.

Oh my, but I'm going to try this when I get home. I have a respirator rated for organic compounds and that (I use it for when I'm airbrushing, thinners and such are quite nasty to breathe in), so I'm not too worried about the side effects.

Heh, I like the way most of them are deadly to humans, difficult to contain.. and oh, they also explode if you look at them. Make a radioactive version and you've got the lot.

Whelks > science.

Things like this is why I took a scientific degree. Then it got all mathematical and I got bored, and stopped going (though still attended occasionally, and graduated).

Someone goes to the trouble of starting an intelligent, interesting thread and ALREADY it has DEGENERATED into STUPID JOKES. I don't know WHY we BOTHER.

Honestly, it'll JUST be whelk porn NEXT.

It would seem that chlorine trifluoride > whelks by quite a way. If the stuff can set asbestos on fire, it'll melt a whelk no problems.

Oh for crying out loud - not another thread I have to avoid because of these bloody Whelks. I don't like their kind. They stink.

Go back to Whelkistan.

Fishist.

When I saw the topic of this thread, I wondered if the first post would just say "Poles. Discuss."

Mix bleach and vinegar instead.

Well salmon's gotta put 'em in their plaice.

Actually, please don't do this, unless you are outside. Thanks.

Oh god no. Please not a ton of fish puns, I've got an awful haddock.

fished that for you.

Shut up.

Shut up or talk about chemistry.

Um... my A Level chemistry teacher once dropped a smallish vial of benzene in the lab once. We were all told to leave the building for twenty minutes.

We never saw him again after that. None of the other teachers would talk about it.

And I similarly have haddocknuff of these fish puns, except for that one that I invented which is he best.

We had really grotty old desks in the physics lab, with metal grills at the back where the pipes for the bunsen burners ran. If you lifted those up, you'd find a lot of chewit wrappers and also a lot of little shiny balls of mercury that had accumulated over the years.

Oh, and Alistair once got a whole vial of, I think, potassium and threw it in the sink. The U-bend exploded and the wall above the sink went on fire.

Mine set his beard on fire, and later moved to the Isle of Man to become a vicar, or something.

My A-Level chemistry teacher ( who was awesome - Hi Mr Sweetland! ) used to hand out "Awards for Laboratory Competence". I got the "Michaelangelo Award for Ceiling Decoration" after managing to massively over boil something and stick weird crystally goop to the 10ft ceiling in the lab.

I have an afternoon of fire safety now booked up.

At an open day at Oxford Uni I watched a guy pour liquid nitrogen into a beaker, then put it in a bell jar, which is proceeded to evacuate with a fairly powerful pump. As the vapour pressure dropped the nitrogen froze, of course (-210degC, fact fans). Then, he used a compressed air cylinder to really quickly repressurise the bell jar, whipped the lid off, grabbed the beaker, and upended it over the desk. Et voila: a solid lump of nitrogen (it's white) subliming away on the desk. It started off about the size of my fist and lasted two or three seconds before it was all gone, filling the room with dense white mist to about shin level. Awesome demo.

For an encore, he dipped his bare hand into a beaker of liquid nitrogen, which is safer than you think. The warmth of your hand immediately boils a layer of nitrogen, and that layer of gas protects you hand from direct contact with the liquid for a second or so. Then you hand starts to feel cold and your reflexes will snatch it back before any harm befalls you. Well, so he said; I wasn't about to try it.

Oh, and in a total mockery of health&safety rules our physics teacher let us dip our fingers into a beaker of mercury. It's extremely weird, because it's really heavy but not all that visous, and the surface tension is massive so when you pull your fingers out they are quite dry. Impressively weird feeling.

Kalmar, I've heard that potassium trick done as an act of vandalism. You dismantle the u-bend and dry it out really, really well, then superglue a small lump of potassium just under the sink trap. Then you retire to a safe distance and wait for some unsuspecting year 7 kid to wash a beaker out....

During the first Chemistry class in secondary school, the teacher did the whole 'try putting your hand through the yellow flame on the bunsen burner' bit.

I did not.

It's not much of an anecdote, but hey. Don't stick your hand in the fire kids, no matter what the teacher says.