OT: Thermite Reaction

"a rather young and inexperience chemistry mistress"

Ah, what a lovely picture that conjures up!

Simon Isaacs <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> Can't remember who it was who asked if you could still do the thermite
> reaction in schools, spoke to our science dept, and the answer is
> yes.....*but* it has to take place at least 25m away from the kids,
> and behind protective screens that will absorb the impact of any
> exploding particles.
>
> Has upset the head of science cos he used to love the thermite
> reaction..... but the procedures in place now make it all but
> impossible to demonstrate it.
>
> The fun police have ruined yet another part of our life.

I did the thermite reaction at the bench. I think it was at O level, and I
don't remember any mishaps. We didn't even have face masks.

However, a couple of years later at a different school, as an A level
student, I assisted the teacher demonstrating the reaction. By this time
the rules had obviously changed - it was done at the teacher's bench in a
crucible surrounded by perspex screens, with the class sitting around on
their stools to watch. After the magnesium burned down there was a long
pause, during which the teacher turned away with a comment about it not
working, whereupon the entire contents erupted out of the crucible, bounced
off the ceiling, fell back to the bench and scattered in all directions,
under the edge of the perspex screens, landing in the laps of the first
couple of rows of pupils. No serious harm was done (everyone had notebooks
on their laps, and they scattered pretty sharply) but it was close.

Other episodes I remember from science lessons include an entire class
being sent home with chlorine poisoning and a hydrogen explosion that
showered glassware across the classroom. We all thought these things were
tremendous fun at the time, but in retrospect I think the fun police are
probably right. There's a lot of potential for injury in a lab.

Jeremy

Alex wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 22:58:05 +0000 (UTC), "TonyB"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I remember blowing into a gas tap while a bunsen was alight further
>> down the bench. Turns the bunsen into a flame thrower!
>>
>> I think one of our masters ( we didn't call 'em teachers at a school
>> like that ) manged to blow up a complex glass arrangement. Would it
>> have been called a Kipps Apparatus?
>>
>
> We had one who had a habit of applying his fag lighter directly to a
> fully open gas tap in order to demonstrate the dangers inherent in
> leaking gas.....
>
> I also remember several exciting incidents with a rather young and
> inexperience chemistry mistress, involving much mucking about with
> Hexane and Hexene, and discovering by accident the flash point - it
> nearly had her eyebrows off when she took the damp cloth off the patch
> of burning desk and the flames shot up again....
>
> There was also a physics master who had a habit of waking up us kids
> who were having a nice doze in the summer sun by chucking his keys
> across the room at us.
>
> Alex

The only one that comes readily to this aged mind was the Headmaster saying 'what
is this boy doing' whist pointing at me stood on the glass legged stool and
connected to a fully operational Whimshurst machine. The result was electryfying
you might say!

--
"He who says it cannot be done is advised not to interrupt her doing
it."

If at first you don't succeed,
maybe skydiving's not for you!

On 2006-03-02, Matthew Maddock <[email protected]> wrote:

> Best I ever remember is the kid who used to take a mouth full of
> gas from the gas tap and then burn it as he exhaled. Don't ever
> remember us or the teacher blowing things up chemically, only
> thing I remember blowing up is the one with the canister that you
> let slowly fill with gas until the gas / air mix gets to that
> crucial point and makes the canister explode.

We had a large plastic coke bottle filled with a gas (probably
hydrogen) then the neck-end lit fly across our heads and pop against
the back wall, that was interesting.

We also had to evacuate the lab once when some twit decided that
blowing into the extraction tube of a flask containing brown Bromide
gas and watching it toot out the top would be funny.. Dissolves your
pleural membranes IIRC.

Then of course there was the bits of wood being fired across the room
by the circular saw in woodwork, and the merriment we had with large
gas cutting torches in metalwork..

So sometimes it's not surprising about the fun police cracking down!!

--
Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!

We all thought these things were
> tremendous fun at the time, but in retrospect I think the fun police are
> probably right. There's a lot of potential for injury in a lab.
>

Very true but a really professional approach asesses such risks and deals
with them. Otherwise you remove and sanitise the experience they should be
getting.
The operative statement is small scale and experience.

In article <[email protected]>, (news05
@tarcus.org.uk) muttered something along the lines of ...
> On 2006-03-02, Matthew Maddock <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Best I ever remember is the kid who used to take a mouth full of
> > gas from the gas tap and then burn it as he exhaled. Don't ever
> > remember us or the teacher blowing things up chemically, only
> > thing I remember blowing up is the one with the canister that you
> > let slowly fill with gas until the gas / air mix gets to that
> > crucial point and makes the canister explode.
>
> We had a large plastic coke bottle filled with a gas (probably
> hydrogen) then the neck-end lit fly across our heads and pop against
> the back wall, that was interesting.
>
> We also had to evacuate the lab once when some twit decided that
> blowing into the extraction tube of a flask containing brown Bromide
> gas and watching it toot out the top would be funny.. Dissolves your
> pleural membranes IIRC.
>
> Then of course there was the bits of wood being fired across the room
> by the circular saw in woodwork, and the merriment we had with large
> gas cutting torches in metalwork..
>
> So sometimes it's not surprising about the fun police cracking down!!
>
>
No fun with chemicals but we did manage to make a fully working
trebuchet out of boss and clamps (the thingys for holding things on in
experiemnts) and managed to embed a marble in the whiteboard at the
other end of the room... in fact the marble was still there when I went
back last year for a visit!

Or the "now class, this is bromine, you have to be very careful with it
and use it only in the fume cupboard" before he managed to drop a
bottlefull on the floor! - cue evacuation of science block and english
block above!

Lost count of the number of times we turned bunsen burners into water
cannons (they work better if you remove the metal tuby bit that mixes
the air in and just use the base!

--
Chris Naylor
Remove your trousers to reply
http://www.neff.org.uk
http://www.ireland2006eb.org.uk/

A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.