Education Through Pyrotechnics - Television Tropes & Idioms

One of this editor's friends blew up a solution. It involved an overdose of calcium carbonate, but the friend was okay.
- This editor did the same with copper carbonate.
This editor once caused the evacuation of a high school after accidentally dropping sodium in the sink in a senior chemistry lab. As can be expected, the pipes exploded, there was a small fire, someone pulled the fire alarm and the school was evacuated with the fire department on its way. No one was hurt, and classes continued after it was confirmed to be an accident.
Similarly, this editor's father would occasionally recount tales of a former workplace, where bored employees would occasionally throw chunks of sodium out of windows during winter, when the ground was covered in snow...
Once in high school, our chemistry teacher told us that the day's experiment would produce pure oxygen as a byproduct, which we would capture (by holding an upside down test tube over the tube we were combining the chemicals in) and then light with our bunsen burners, to "prove the experiment was successful". You'd better believe that the entire class did everything right and got their experiments done that day.
- This Trooper had a similar experiment in high school, only with matches and several glass cups (because the school was too cheap to provide us with actual equipment). Eventually, we began combining the glasses of oxygen at different angles and shattered one of the glasses in one explosion.
  - Might you two mean hydrogen instead of oxygen? Oxygen can't catch fire or explode (but it can make an existing flame bigger).
One of this editor's friends caused an explosion by carrying a lighted splint past a gas tap he didn't realise was open. The wall was singed but the teacher didn't notice.
This troper once had his high school's chemistry teacher described to him as someone who, since he was nearing retirement, tried to have a lot more fun with his classes than might otherwise be expected. This included causing explosions whenever possible.
This troper's high school Chem teacher started the very first class off with an explosive demonstration, and then did the lighting hydrogen as our first experiment. He was also fond of telling us how big the explosion would be when we get hit by an earthquake (although that wasn't unjustified, as due to several school closures and new regulations, we had FOUR schools worth of all the dangerous chemicals.)
- At least you didn't have any crystallizing picric acid lurking in the back shelves... the bomb squad had to be called in.
This troper's high school Chem teacher started the year off by lighting his desk on fire.
- This troper's teacher did the same. He then proceeded to light some steel wool on fire and threw it in the air when it lit too soon, almost hitting this troper.
This troper's high school Chem lab had very old bunsen burners. We were required to light the match, and then turn on the burners. I had a pair of crazy friends who decided to do it the other way around, and then couldn't light the match...
This troper's college suffered a lab accident in the Chem building. While no details were ever divulged, apparently, while the lab room was left generally intact, the blast was still powerful enough to knock out the power grid to the entire school campus.
This troper had a teacher in high school who would start off his physical science, physics, and chemistry classes each year with a cute little potassium explosion. Sadly, this troper wasn't in the class where the potassium he'd prepared spontaneously combusted as the oil it had been stored in dripped off. She heard it was funny. This troper also had a college Chem professor who is "no longer allowed" to teach the lab sections for his basic chemistry class, for obvious explodey reasons.
This troper's mother once told her about a classmate who lighted a match near an open tap that dispensed pure oxygen. Miraculously, no one got hurt, even though half the classroom was ruined.
Somewhere between Truth In Television and Film, this troper once made a short movie in which a disastrous high school chemistry experiment triggered the chain of events making up the plot.When asking the chem teacher if she could borrow the lab to film the scene, he eagerly offered up a few chemicals that really would produce a small explosion. This troper declined, having come up with a much more effective way to imply an explosion. (A fast dip to white and the sound of breaking glass. Works wonders.)
- This filmmaker troper applauds the above troper's skillful creativity, but decries her abhorrent lack of joy at filming BADA BOOM. Free BADA BOOM. Couldn't you have used both effects?
Clearly this trope is Truth In Television, everybody who's ever been in science class has had one of these stories. One of the more memorable high school shenanigans was when some guys managed to set alight the gas duct that they were meant to plug the bunsen burner into. The result was a flame that went all the way to the ceiling before the teacher hit the emergency shut-off valve.
This troper had a classmate who managed to kill the power to that wing of the school by "accidentally, I swear" spilling concentrated hydrochloric acid on the electrical outlets set into the desks. This resulted in sparks flying out of said outlets at roughly groin level, which worried said male classmate very much. The smell was something out of a children's gross-out-entertainment show, the outlets were boarded over the next day, and the kid never lived it down.
This troper had a college lab teacher who decided to show us just how powerful the chemicals we were using to clean glassware were...by putting a drop of said chemical on a thick plate of stainless steel, and having us watch as said chemical ate through almost half an inch of steel. Not quite explodey, but same principle.
This troper's uncle once pitched a brick of sodium into the Charles River, apparently just for the hell of it. The resulting explosion could be heard in Quincy. Bored drunk MIT undergrads are so fun.
- This troper is given to understand that a professor, with several chem students, did much the same thing several years back with a large quantity of sodium in the Mississippi River, without alcohol. The resultant spray reportedly struck the 70-foot clearance bridge, though that is likely an exaggeration. There is also another professor who is no longer allowed near the department's Tesla coil, for presumably similar, if less outright explosive reasons.
- This troper's mother had a classmate who intentionally pitched a chunk of sodium down the chemistry lab sink as a prank. The classmate survived; the sink did not.
This troper has had several instructors do demos involving glowing, fizzling, and occasionally exploding chemicals, including the obligatory "alkali metals in water" demos.
This troper obviously went to an extremely boring high school, as neither his nor any of his classmates' chemistry teachers ever blew anything up or set anything on fire to the best of his recollection.
- Variant: This troper went to a high school for the of students who shouldn't be allowed near fire. We never were.
This troper's chem teacher gave the usual wear-your-goggles spiel at the beginning of the year. Near the end of the year he gave a sometimes-goggles-can't-save-you spiel accompanied by exposing a set of goggles to a large beaker of pyrotechnic materials. Shortly thereafter we had a wrecked beaker and a puddle of plastic.
This troper's chem teacher was able to somehow subvert this trope, with education through lack of pyrotechnics. She half-filled a tennis ball-can with explosive gas, and set off the striker. Explosion. She then asked the class if they wanted her to add twice the gas. Very vocal approval. Striker goes. No oxygen, no explosion. Lesson on combustion complete.
This troper's chem teacher usually didn't do pyrotechnics, although she did show us some very cool chemical reactions. Except that time when she had the class build a rocket by extracting hydrogen from water, storing it in a plastic bottle and lighting it up. And the time when she placed a small piece of sodium into a bowl of water. Also, apparently some student had once accidentally dropped a piece of sodium down the drain, causing serious damage to the school's plumbings.
This troper's biology teacher once demonstrated digestion by setting fire to some Cheetos— relatively mild as educational pyrotechnics go, but it seemed gratuitous compared to his usually rather plain lectures.
This troper's mother still has impressive scars on her arms from an accident in a chem class. She didn't have a sense of smell, and so picked up the wrong chemical for a reaction. She punched a hole through foot thick steel reinforced concrete, and melted much of the sink.
This troper had a chemistry teacher who did much of the above—in addition to setting hydrogen on fire, turning a large 5-gallon bottle into a mini-rocket, and and creating a huge puddle of green flames in the middle of a lab table (all the while spewing rainbow-colored fireballs from a Bunsen burner), he blew methane-filled soap bubbles, and popped them with a flame-on-a-stick. By adjusting the levels of methane, he showed up how he could make them go up in pretty fireballs or explode with violent force. One of this troper's favorites of his experiments didn't really go *fwoom*, but it did go *BANG!*—the combination of dry ice and sealed containers to create fantastically loud explosions.
- A more recent, college chem teacher of this troper's was fairly tame, but she did decide to set off some thermite for us once. While this troper knew all about thermite from the Mythbusters, she didn't know (and nor did the professor warn us) just how very bright the stuff was when it went up. Even though this troper looked away in less than a second, she was seeing a flame-shaped spot in her eyes for a good fifteen minutes afterward.
This troper learned how to make things explode for no reason other than "It looks cool" and "the director wants it" in her final year of Production in theatre school. Guns! Pyro! Exploding fake hearts that gush blood! AWESOME!
- Oh hell yes. This troper was GOOD at that stuff. According to her mother, a little too good. (Troper still isn't sure what her complaint was - the homemade firecrackers were a massive hit with the neighborhood kids...)
This troper's high school chemistry teacher has yet to cause any actual explosions, but he has caused one fire drill per year so far. I'm hoping my senior year is a grand finale.
This troper didn't witness it himself, but heard that one particular science teacher at his high school often started his grade 9 science class each semester by setting his desk on fire. He then put it out with a fire extinguisher or some such, but that's not the point. Not sure what point this proved, but no one complained.
This troper accidently unscrewed the bottom out of a lit bunsen burner. FWOOM. On the bright side, my eyebrows have grown back, more luxuriant than ever!
Proof that this doesn't always happen in a lab, or on purpose: During a Boy Scout camping trip, our fire safety counselor was explaining to us about root fires and the like. Somehow, this troper can't remember because this was about 12 years ago, the roots of the lone tree in the clearing caught, and nothing happened...until a giant flame exploded out THE TOP OF THE TREE. Ka-Boom indeed.
- This troper was on a Boy Scout camping trip when someone somehow got camp stove fuel all over his hand and didn't realize it until it caught fire! Luckily for him, the fuel has such a low flashpoint that he wasn't burned at all and the fire exhausted itself before he even had time to put it out himself.
This troper's High School chemistry teacher set off the fire alarm at least 10 times a year. Until they replaced the smoke detectors with infrared detectors, at great cost. What set all this off? Well, the first day of class, the students would set themselves on fire. Ok, so maybe not themselves, but rather hydrogen bubbles on their skin, but still. Oh, and "self-carving" pumpkins for Halloween.
This troper has another acid-related tale. My biology professor went to college with a guy with spilled hydrochloric acid on his crotch. His jeans melted, but after being shoved in to the emergency shower, he was just fine.
To the best of this troper's knowledge, this Darwin Awards personal account was not written by her chemistry teacher. But he did once blow a fist-sized hole in the desk doing precisely that experiment. He has also been known to use unwisely large chunks of potassium in alkali-metal-water demonstrations, and once helpfully demonstrated to his class how not to put out a chip pan fire. There is still a scorch mark on the ceiling.
Almost an explosion, but not quite: In college electronics lab, the professor was very adamant about making sure people read the directions fully before starting, and always put their capacitors in the right alignment (Those who've taken these classes know where this is going). One day in lab, we head a loud 'BANG!' followed by 'CRACK' and 'SPARK'. The professor leaps across the room, unplugs a computer monitor (which now has a thumb-sized hole in it), and then leaps just as quickly to the lab bench where two students were sitting, laughing. "Gentlemen, remember how I said capacitors were not toys and should never be played with? You both just failed this course. Get out." The people sitting on either side of the destroyed monitor cheered, since a foot in either direction would've meant their heads.
- Similar incident in this troper's GCSE electronics class. Making something, can't remember exactly what, but there was a sudden, loud bang and somebody screamed. They'd wired up a capacitor the wrong way round and it exploded. Although, my electronics teacher is a mad person and deliberately reverse-biased and blew up a diode and another capacitor on separate occasions. There's still a burn mark on the desk from the diode.
This troper's high-school anatomy teacher gained a decent amount of fame in her school for accidentally setting her own hair on fire during a laboratory safety demonstration. Thinking quickly (and never one to miss an opportunity for education), she dunked her head in the sink, turned back to the class and said words to the effect of "And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how NOT to operate a Bunsen burner."
Today this troper's Physics teacher blew up a pumpkin. He said it was to demonstrate Newton's laws.
This troper's GSA in his freshman chem class should have learned these two rules: 1.) Make sure students know to never mix chemicals unless the lab instructs you to do so. 2.) Make sure that students know that todays lab has chemicals that shouldn't be mixed. The guy working at the station across from me broke his beakers with a burst of purple smoke that day.
Last week this troper's beginning chemistry teacher proved that hydrogen bubbles + fire = FUN. It was part of her lecture about reactions. This troper was one of the brave few to try it.
Once, in high school, this troper and his lab partner were performing a relatively simple experiment, the goal of which was to determine how much hydrogen was produced by a reaction. Our method? Collect the products and explode them. It didn't produce a very quantitative result, but it was effective enough.
- And although this particular anecdote isn't explosion-related, it is chemistry-related: troper and his friends, while in grade 11, spent the better part of a semester fermenting iced tea in a locker. When our chemistry teacher found out, he gave us a few tips and let us test the alcohol content in the lab.
This troper. A very large container. Two parts pure hydrogen. One part pure oxygen. A very long lit splint. Result: A very loud bang, all the windows in the building blowing out, a small amount of water in the split container.
This Troper's Physics teacher did a demonstration with "flash paper" at a Parent Teacher night. Long story short, he probably shouldn't have assumed the second piece he accidentally picked up wasn't going to have much of an effect.
[[iTroper This troper's]] father had a very dangerous situation happen when he was in high school. A fellow student in his chem class accidentally screwed up an experiment. How? Let's just say that mixing glycerin and nitric acid is a VERY bad idea. They had to evacuate the school, bring in the police and fire department, and the principal chucked the vial into a nearby field. Snow went up like a hurricane (it was winter at the time).
- There was another thing the same Troper's father knew about. A guy in the high school's electronics repair class ended up crossing some wires he wasn't supposed to and blew up the TV, shooting himself across the room!
- This troper's father once got ahold of part of a brick of potassium. Lets just say that he and his pants learned as very valuable lesson about not letting alkali metals contact water (he was uninjured).
This Troper was one half of a blackpowder demonstration to assembled teachers prior to a teacher/parent meeting. The raise from behind the desk dramatically in a gasmask and labcoat part. The experiment worked. The meeting had to be moved to another classroom.
Happened, strangely enough, in this troper's foods class. In the next kitchen over, someone spilled a bag of flour over the burner. explosion.
In this troper's school, a (now retired) teacher set a student's lab notebook on fire with a parbolic mirror once a year.
Environmental Systems teachers should never try to be chemistry teachers. I believe the burn marks are still on the desks.
This troper's lab partner placed a red hot crucible on this troper's instruction sheet for the lab. Predictably, the instruction sheet and several paper towels caught fire.
- Said troper also had a friend who blew up a test tube containing copper and sulfur. This was in 8th grade.
This Troper had a middle-school teacher who sparked our interest on the first day by soaking his hand in a water-and-alcohol solution and setting it on fire. He used the right mix, so it didn't burn him.
This troper had this quirky physics teacher who finished his lab class early once, and snuck a coil of magnesium out from the storeroom (we had some shared-use storerooms and labs in my secondary school) for the sole purpose of lighting it on fire to entertain us. And probably himself as well, judging by his expression at that time.
This Anon had a friend who was a... sort of emotionless pyro psycho. He would spend chemistry or phsyics practicals covertly stuffing bunsen burners full of wooden splints, and while I can't remember if he ever actually blew anything up, he sure tried with the materials available. Also, one of our teachers once demonstrated what I think was the thermite reaction and gassed the room.

Take these two beakers and go back to Education Through Pyrotechnics. But carefully!

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