Stephen Howard wrote:
On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:47:32 +0100, Tim S wrote:

ARWadsworth wibbled:

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child? I know that one
regular poster deliberately electrocuted his sister.

Adam

Wiring a random transformer from the back of a valve TV to the
mains. I knew what it would do, but not which way! Measured 8V with
my cheap and crappy Radio Shack meter. I was lucky.

Tried my new 2A/10000-turn electromagnet on the colour TV to see how
it bent electron beams. Discovered the joy of inbuilt degaussing
coils, about 50 times before my parents came back. Nearly Darwined
by that one!

Lots of fund with pot.mang, pot.nitrate, and any reducer to hand.
Tried making gunpowder, and drying it in the gas oven...

Electrolysing water + salt direct from mains. That goes pop-ety-pop,
a lot...

Seems a lot of us were intrigued by explosives and electricity....

I did some incredibly stupid things with ground up Swan Vesta heads (
which in itself was pretty daft - but safety matches didn't have
enough 'ooomph' ) and bits of copper pipe.

Prolly my first magic trick, peel the striking paper from a box of matches,
place on coin & set fire. It left a greasy evil smelling residue. If you
rubbed the coin with your thumb till it warmed up it emmitted smoke! I
think phosphorus was involved.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Stephen Howard wrote:
On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:47:32 +0100, Tim S wrote:

ARWadsworth wibbled:

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child? I know that one
regular poster deliberately electrocuted his sister.

Adam
Wiring a random transformer from the back of a valve TV to the mains. I knew
what it would do, but not which way! Measured 8V with my cheap and crappy
Radio Shack meter. I was lucky.

Tried my new 2A/10000-turn electromagnet on the colour TV to see how it bent
electron beams. Discovered the joy of inbuilt degaussing coils, about 50
times before my parents came back. Nearly Darwined by that one!

Lots of fund with pot.mang, pot.nitrate, and any reducer to hand. Tried
making gunpowder, and drying it in the gas oven...

Electrolysing water + salt direct from mains. That goes pop-ety-pop, a
lot...

Seems a lot of us were intrigued by explosives and electricity....

I did some incredibly stupid things with ground up Swan Vesta heads (
which in itself was pretty daft - but safety matches didn't have
enough 'ooomph' ) and bits of copper pipe.

We used to make our own bangers by getting a couple of large bolts and
a nut and screwing them together with a match head inbetween. Tied to
a loop of string and hurled against a wall they'd make a pretty decent
bang.

I moved onto butane - and found that by squirting a generous amount
down the plughole of one of a long line of sinks in the school's
chemistry lab and then igniting it, I could get a satisfying 'whoomph'
out of almost every sink along the line.

....and then there was the WD40 flame gun...

Regards,


Acquired a string of Crow scarers, these are big firework bangers set at
varying intervals along a piece of thick string, used by farmers who
place them in a crop field, light the string, the intermittent bangs
chase of the birds. Any way we removed the bangers from the string and
carries out three experiments. First we placed one in the middle of the
road and covered it with gravel then lit. A satisfactory bang and
spreading of gravel. The next we jammed behind a lock on a milking shed
door (burglars in training), the resulting explosion did not break the
lock, but the farmer was mad, his cows kicked over and wasted several
buckets of milk. Finally we placed one in a brick that was blocking a
drain outside a house (the type of brick with holes in it). This made a
very satisfactory explosion, but it was our last, the house owner
reported us to the village bobby, so the remainder were confiscated.

--
Please reply to group,emails to designated
address are never read.

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:01:57 +0100 Bob Minchin wrote :
We undertook an experiment in the first floor school science labs to see
if the water or gas supply had the highest pressure by connecting
them together one afternoon. The teacher kept lurking nearby so the
supplies were connect for quite sometime. We only got the real result
the next day when there were no school dinners. The cooks had tried to
light the ovens in the ground floor kitchen only to find that water was
coming out of the burners for some reason!

Our version - when the teacher went off for a cup of tea, leaving us to do
the lab work - was to get the bellows and pump air into the gas supply. In
due course a teacher from the next lab would come into to ask whether we
were having problems with the gas. Why yes, and such a disappointment to
us that we couldn't get on with our work.

Now that I know about purging gas pipework this probably wasn't the safest
thing to do, but I guess that bunsen burners don't really care.

--
Tony Bryer, 'Software to build on' from Greentram
www.superbeam.co.uk www.superbeam.com www.greentram.com

In message , The Medway
Handyman writes
Contact bangers sound more like NI3 - but pot.mang isn't used to
make this AFAIK. Perhaps there's some extra fun to be had with
pot.mang?

Wasn't it something like ammonium iodide? or something iodide.

Iodine rings a bell, maybe I was thinking of the colour? And hydrogen
peroxide possibly? Long time ago...





From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nitrogen triiodide, also called nitrogen iodide, more correctly,
triiodine nitride to distinguish it from the triiodide ion, is the
chemical compound with the formula NI3. It is an extremely sensitive
contact explosive: small quantities explode with a gunpowder-like snap
when touched even lightly, releasing a purple cloud of iodine vapor. NI3
has a complex structural chemistry that has required relatively heroic
efforts to elucidate because of the instability of the derivatives.

Nitrogen triiodide has no practical commercial value due to its extreme
shock sensitivity, making it difficult to store, transport, and utilize
for controlled explosions.


I used to make it at school, 40 years ago and carry it home in my pocket
in a test tube. One day I went to my locker in the garage and there was
no sign of the test tube but there were a lot of fine glass shards every
where and the inside of the locker was a yellowy purple colour!! I
stopped making it after that.

I was lucky in having a very understanding father, who was a chemist and
spent some years working with explosives. He taught me well and let me
get away with more than he really should have. I always remember the
opening line in one of his manuals, it went some thing along the lines
of

"Remember, the purpose of an explosive is to EXPLODE" very
true..........

I also had the rather dubious honour of emptying 4 classrooms in a block
when I fed a small amount of a tear gas through a gas liquid
chromatograph that should have vented to the outside world, but didn't!!
Apparently it was quite a sight if only I could have seen it !

( Still alive at 50+ and the shrapnel in my left hand finally worked its
way out some years ago now. )
--
Bill

Graham. wrote:

Electrolytic capacitor on long wires out of the window. Plug into mains,
metallic confetti everywhere.

I just realised I made an unintentional one word pun in the sentence
above. Anyone?

My guess would be "window", as in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(...countermeasure)


Rich.

In message , Harry
Bloomfield writes
The Medway Handyman expressed precisely :
We also made a paste from potassium permanganate & something else?

Glycerine!

Icing sugar worked too.

Iodine and ammonia was fun too, nice little clouds of coloured smoke but
a tad unstable when it dried out.

Bin bags full of acetylene and a few feet of lit bog roll hanging down
from them is apparently fun as well although I'd know nothing about that
officer.

Drilling out an ornamental cannon to take ball bearings is probably not
a good idea either, especially if you have access to shotgun cartridges
and a Stanley knife.

I miss my childhood, I think I may have a second...
--
Clint Sharp

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:15:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

ARWadsworth wrote:
Sod Teddy Bears. This article reminded me of my first childhood DIY
experiments

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8154757.stm


I had several DIY childhood experiences and the bigger the good hiding from
my parents the more damage I must have caused.

The most memorable experiment was when my brother and I found our Dad's
hammer on the landing and we smashed the bathroom sink into bits to see how
long it would take to smash the sink into bits.

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child? I know that one regular
poster deliberately electrocuted his sister.

I sawed the top off a live 22 cartrdidge to see what was inside.

A big bang..

Adam



Oh yes, that was fun. I clamped one in the vice in my fathers garage
and whacked the cap with a hammer and punch. That made a bit of a mess
of the corrugated sheeting that the garage was made of. Unfortunately,
my father was exceedingly violent and he was under the impression that
he had the only key to his garage, I had made myself one. Luckily the
garage was piled high with tools and bits so I used his panel beating
gear to get the wall back to a reasonable shape and carefully
rearranged the crap heap.

On 18/07/2009 17:56 ARWadsworth wrote:

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child?

Short length of copper pipe with one end folded over and hammered flat,
contents of a couple or three (or were there more?) bangers poured into
it, a marble popped in on top. Lay on top of a small heap of banger
powder with a short trail, apply match and watch as window in porch at
top of street is hit by marble...

When bangers were out of season we had to make do with weedkiller and sugar.

--
F

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"Frank Erskine" wrote in message
. ..

I really think it's sad that kids nowadays are deprived of the
experience of technical/scientific 'research'. Little wonder that as a
nation we're rapidly falling from being world leaders to 'also-rans'.


I think everything has been dumbed down so much that Darwinism doesn't
work anymore.
As a result we have a country run by politicians that should have been
removed from the gene pool during childhood.


But Dennis - you epitomise this culture

You are the worst example of "live in the box", "no risk" we have in
uk.d-i-y

You are the worst example I know of for everything.

In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"Frank Erskine" wrote in message
...

I really think it's sad that kids nowadays are deprived of the
experience of technical/scientific 'research'. Little wonder that as a
nation we're rapidly falling from being world leaders to 'also-rans'.


I think everything has been dumbed down so much that Darwinism
doesn't work anymore.
As a result we have a country run by politicians that should have
been removed from the gene pool during childhood.


But Dennis - you epitomise this culture

You are the worst example of "live in the box", "no risk" we have in
uk.d-i-y

You are the worst example I know of for everything.

Whatever,

You are the worst case of what you were doing down above

You are the archtypical example of the dumbed down arsehole who should
have been removed from the gene pool at birth. You then come all rufty
tufty and diss your own sort


--
geoff

Old Git wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:15:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

ARWadsworth wrote:
Sod Teddy Bears. This article reminded me of my first childhood DIY
experiments

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8154757.stm


I had several DIY childhood experiences and the bigger the good hiding from
my parents the more damage I must have caused.

The most memorable experiment was when my brother and I found our Dad's
hammer on the landing and we smashed the bathroom sink into bits to see how
long it would take to smash the sink into bits.

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child? I know that one regular
poster deliberately electrocuted his sister.

I sawed the top off a live 22 cartrdidge to see what was inside.

A big bang..

Adam



Oh yes, that was fun. I clamped one in the vice in my fathers garage
and whacked the cap with a hammer and punch. That made a bit of a mess
of the corrugated sheeting that the garage was made of. Unfortunately,
my father was exceedingly violent and he was under the impression that
he had the only key to his garage, I had made myself one. Luckily the
garage was piled high with tools and bits so I used his panel beating
gear to get the wall back to a reasonable shape and carefully
rearranged the crap heap.

That reminds me - my some amazing chance, our home back door key was
very similar to the main master key pattern at school. I took one of our
copies, filed it down a bit further and ended up with a key that was
more 'powerful' than most of the staff. Sure learned quite a bit about
locks.

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

dennis@home wrote:
"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"Frank Erskine" wrote in message
...

I really think it's sad that kids nowadays are deprived of the
experience of technical/scientific 'research'. Little wonder that
as a nation we're rapidly falling from being world leaders to
'also-rans'.

I think everything has been dumbed down so much that Darwinism
doesn't work anymore.
As a result we have a country run by politicians that should have
been removed from the gene pool during childhood.


But Dennis - you epitomise this culture

You are the worst example of "live in the box", "no risk" we have in
uk.d-i-y

You are the worst example I know of for everything.

Dennis FFS show some originality.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Graham. wrote:

Electrolytic capacitor on long wires out of the window. Plug into mains,
metallic confetti everywhere.

I just realised I made an unintentional one word pun in the sentence
above. Anyone?

My guess would be "window", as in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(...countermeasure)

Correct!

--
Graham.

%Profound_observation%

Tim S wrote:

Tried my new 2A/10000-turn electromagnet on the colour TV to see how it bent
electron beams. Discovered the joy of inbuilt degaussing coils, about 50
times before my parents came back. Nearly Darwined by that one!

Moving an AC electromagnet slowly away from a TV will degauss it quite
reasonably. Much easier than power cycling it - especially as some are
designed not to degauss unless they've been off for a while.

Andy

Tony Bryer wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:01:57 +0100 Bob Minchin wrote :
We undertook an experiment in the first floor school science labs to see
if the water or gas supply had the highest pressure by connecting
them together one afternoon. The teacher kept lurking nearby so the
supplies were connect for quite sometime. We only got the real result
the next day when there were no school dinners. The cooks had tried to
light the ovens in the ground floor kitchen only to find that water was
coming out of the burners for some reason!

Our version - when the teacher went off for a cup of tea, leaving us to do
the lab work - was to get the bellows and pump air into the gas supply. In
due course a teacher from the next lab would come into to ask whether we
were having problems with the gas. Why yes, and such a disappointment to
us that we couldn't get on with our work.

Now that I know about purging gas pipework this probably wasn't the safest
thing to do, but I guess that bunsen burners don't really care.


I managed to prove to the others at school that my lung power was
greater than mains gas pressure once. I suspect it's not as dangerous
as purging requirements might suggest - I don't think a flame could get
down a bunsen jet against the flow of gas.

BTW - to the balloonatics - methane is the main component of natural
gas, molecular mass ~16. Air is a mix of nitrogen (~28) and oxygen
(~32) so while a natural gas balloon won't fly as well as a
mostly-hydrogen filled town gas one it should still work.

Andy

Not a childhood DIY experiment but I found this an a forum and Adams
reference to a Taser reminded me

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2244349/posts

Cheers

John

In message , Clint Sharp
writes
Drilling out an ornamental cannon to take ball bearings is probably not
a good idea either, especially if you have access to shotgun cartridges
and a Stanley knife.

Made an "ornamental" cannon in metal work once, with a minor adaptation
it took 6.3mm Hilti blanks. Most effective.

I miss my childhood, I think I may have a second...
I'm still wondering how I made it through my first one..........

--
Bill

"geoff" wrote in message
...


You are the worst example I know of for everything.

Whatever,

You are the worst case of what you were doing down above

Is this the five minute argument or do you want to try for the full 15 mins?

You are the archtypical example of the dumbed down arsehole who should
have been removed from the gene pool at birth. You then come all rufty
tufty and diss your own sort

The only two around here that I diss are you and TMW.
You are just plain cr@p.
You are also too stupid to understand what I write.
As the sentence "You are the worst case of what you were doing down above"
you were foolish enough to post demonstrates.
Go and play with TMH you are well suited.

The Medway Handyman coughed up some electrons that declared:

Prolly my first magic trick, peel the striking paper from a box of
matches,
place on coin & set fire. It left a greasy evil smelling residue. If you
rubbed the coin with your thumb till it warmed up it emmitted smoke! I
think phosphorus was involved.



Yes - red phosphorous is the striking element on the side of a box of
matches. Swan Vesta "non safety" matches have the red phosphorous in the
match head so they strike anywhere.

Clint Sharp coughed up some electrons that declared:

In message , Harry
Bloomfield writes
The Medway Handyman expressed precisely :
We also made a paste from potassium permanganate & something else?

Glycerine!

Icing sugar worked too.

Iodine and ammonia was fun too, nice little clouds of coloured smoke but
a tad unstable when it dried out.

Bin bags full of acetylene and a few feet of lit bog roll hanging down
from them is apparently fun as well although I'd know nothing about that
officer.

Drilling out an ornamental cannon to take ball bearings is probably not
a good idea either, especially if you have access to shotgun cartridges
and a Stanley knife.

I miss my childhood, I think I may have a second...

I knew a bloke who heard that ball bearing balls were "unbreakable". So he
decided the best way of testing this was to stand one on a penny washer on
a railway track rail next to a level crossing and hide.

Apparantly, there was an loud band then lots of descending volume bangs.

The ball bearing could be seen slightly protruding from the rail face - the
washer was no where to be seen.

A few days later, he noticed that the ball had been ground flat with the
rail by track workers.

Bet the railway's wheel shop loved him ;-

Cheers

Tim

F coughed up some electrons that declared:

On 18/07/2009 17:56 ARWadsworth wrote:

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child?

Short length of copper pipe with one end folded over and hammered flat,
contents of a couple or three (or were there more?) bangers poured into
it, a marble popped in on top. Lay on top of a small heap of banger
powder with a short trail, apply match and watch as window in porch at
top of street is hit by marble...

When bangers were out of season we had to make do with weedkiller and
sugar.


Discovering that butane was heavier than air by filling the hearth with it
and lighting it.

F coughed up some electrons that declared:

On 18/07/2009 17:56 ARWadsworth wrote:

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child?

Short length of copper pipe with one end folded over and hammered flat,
contents of a couple or three (or were there more?) bangers poured into
it, a marble popped in on top. Lay on top of a small heap of banger
powder with a short trail, apply match and watch as window in porch at
top of street is hit by marble...

When bangers were out of season we had to make do with weedkiller and
sugar.


Also playing WWI by mixing bleach and spirits of salts to generate moderate
clouds of chlorine.

Outside of course

Andy Champ coughed up some electrons that declared:

Tim S wrote:

Tried my new 2A/10000-turn electromagnet on the colour TV to see how it
bent electron beams. Discovered the joy of inbuilt degaussing coils,
about 50 times before my parents came back. Nearly Darwined by that one!

Moving an AC electromagnet slowly away from a TV will degauss it quite
reasonably. Much easier than power cycling it - especially as some are
designed not to degauss unless they've been off for a while.

Andy

When your pants are turning brown, you make do with whatever seems to be
working

In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"geoff" wrote in message
...


You are the worst example I know of for everything.

Whatever,

You are the worst case of what you were doing down above

Is this the five minute argument or do you want to try for the full 15 mins?

You are the archtypical example of the dumbed down arsehole who
should have been removed from the gene pool at birth. You then come
all rufty tufty and diss your own sort

The only two around here that I diss are you and TMW.
You are just plain cr@p.
You are also too stupid to understand what I write.

No dennis - you're a safety nazi and you're trying to attack safety
nazis

You epitomise the goggles with blu-tak brigade


--
geoff

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"geoff" wrote in message
...


You are the worst example I know of for everything.

Whatever,

You are the worst case of what you were doing down above

Is this the five minute argument or do you want to try for the full 15
mins?

You are the archtypical example of the dumbed down arsehole who should
have been removed from the gene pool at birth. You then come all rufty
tufty and diss your own sort

The only two around here that I diss are you and TMW.
You are just plain cr@p.
You are also too stupid to understand what I write.

No dennis - you're a safety nazi and you're trying to attack safety nazis

You epitomise the goggles with blu-tak brigade

You are just plain crazy.
Have you not seen a doctor or do you just forget to take the meds?

Tim S wrote:
brass monkey wibbled:

"Tim S" wrote in message
.. .
Harry Bloomfield wibbled:

The Medway Handyman expressed precisely :
We also made a paste from potassium permanganate & something else?
Glycerine!

That mix self ignites fairly quickly (10's seconds to minutes) - not a
contact explosive...

Contact bangers sound more like NI3 - but pot.mang isn't used to make
this AFAIK. Perhaps there's some extra fun to be had with pot.mang?
Wasn't it something like ammonium iodide? or something iodide.

NI3 = Nitrogen Tri-Iodide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_triiodide

You can make Nitrogen Tri-Cloride but that blows up pretty much as soon as
you make it, according to our chemistry teacher.

I remember a science teacher agreeing to show us how to make that on the
understanding that none was to leave the lab....

Anyway, some bstard pinched the 35mm film canister of it that I took out
of the lab! I did however find said can abandoned later - containing
only a tiny crumb left. I knocked that out onto the table tennis table a
forgot about it until a few hours later I was in the same room when
someone happened to wander past it and waft a bit of paper he was
carrying over it. There was a bang and puff of purple smoke, and a
rather surprised owner of a sheet of paper with a hole in it and a large
purple stain ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

That's more like it. At school we made up lots of 13A plugs with the
live and neutral connected together and plugged them into various
sockets around the school at dinner time.

Ah, at my school they were too smart for that. They had a special 12VDC
main in the science labs with special plugs and sockets. Needless to say,
these were 'popped' on a daily basis.

We did not have RCD protection at my school.

When I were a lad we barely had electricity

When I was there (first year I think), someone in the higher years had bet
20 quid that he wouldn't swallow some Potassium Cyanide (yes, there really
was that sort of stuff in the chem lab store room). Someone took the bet
on. He swallowed it. He died. By the time I was doing 'interesting'
chemistry there was nothing remotely dangerous left. Benzine? Oh no,
cyclohexane ...

However, 20 molar acid was available for 6th form projects. Cutting a long
story short, some twit spilled 20 molar nitric all over the bench, which
started smoking. So he started wiping up the mess with the sleeve of his
lab coat, which started smoking ...

Ah, the fun we had - Sodium in water (and the bowl exploded!), nylon
filaments draped out of the chem lab window across the playing fields ...

Everything else was ****e of course. English? History? Nah thanks, I like
breaking stuff

Al.

John Rumm wibbled:

Tim S wrote:
brass monkey wibbled:

"Tim S" wrote in message
.. .
Harry Bloomfield wibbled:

The Medway Handyman expressed precisely :
We also made a paste from potassium permanganate & something else?
Glycerine!

That mix self ignites fairly quickly (10's seconds to minutes) - not a
contact explosive...

Contact bangers sound more like NI3 - but pot.mang isn't used to make
this AFAIK. Perhaps there's some extra fun to be had with pot.mang?
Wasn't it something like ammonium iodide? or something iodide.

NI3 = Nitrogen Tri-Iodide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_triiodide

You can make Nitrogen Tri-Cloride but that blows up pretty much as soon
as you make it, according to our chemistry teacher.

I remember a science teacher agreeing to show us how to make that on the
understanding that none was to leave the lab....

Anyway, some bstard pinched the 35mm film canister of it that I took out
of the lab! I did however find said can abandoned later - containing
only a tiny crumb left. I knocked that out onto the table tennis table a
forgot about it until a few hours later I was in the same room when
someone happened to wander past it and waft a bit of paper he was
carrying over it. There was a bang and puff of purple smoke, and a
rather surprised owner of a sheet of paper with a hole in it and a large
purple stain ;-)


Sure he didn't make NI3 John, those being crystals - NCl3 is a liquid?

From the Wikipedia article:

"Nitrogen trichloride is a dangerous explosive, being sensitive to light,
heat, and organic compounds. Pierre Louis Dulong first prepared it in 1812,
and lost two fingers and an eye in two separate explosions. An explosion
from NCl3 blinded Sir Humphry Davy temporarily, inducing him to hire
Michael Faraday as a coworker. Belgian researchers reported a possible link
between NCl3 and rising numbers of childhood asthma cases, in what they
call the pool chlorine hypothesis, as an alternative to the hygiene
hypothesis with a closer causal link."

And did Davy hate Faraday?

Cheers

Tim

Al wibbled:


When I were a lad we barely had electricity

You had electricity?

We had to wait for a thunderstorm, then father would make all of us stand in
a line between the roof and the TV in the living room, holding hands,
except for brother Georgie, who would hold an umbrella as high as he
could...

"Al" wrote in message
. 4...
That's more like it. At school we made up lots of 13A plugs with the
live and neutral connected together and plugged them into various
sockets around the school at dinner time.

Ah, at my school they were too smart for that. They had a special 12VDC
main in the science labs with special plugs and sockets. Needless to say,
these were 'popped' on a daily basis.

We did not have RCD protection at my school.

When I were a lad we barely had electricity

When I was there (first year I think), someone in the higher years had bet
20 quid that he wouldn't swallow some Potassium Cyanide (yes, there really
was that sort of stuff in the chem lab store room). Someone took the bet
on. He swallowed it. He died. By the time I was doing 'interesting'
chemistry there was nothing remotely dangerous left. Benzine? Oh no,
cyclohexane ...

However, 20 molar acid was available for 6th form projects. Cutting a long
story short, some twit spilled 20 molar nitric all over the bench, which
started smoking. So he started wiping up the mess with the sleeve of his
lab coat, which started smoking ...

Ah, the fun we had - Sodium in water (and the bowl exploded!), nylon
filaments draped out of the chem lab window across the playing fields ...

Everything else was ****e of course. English? History? Nah thanks, I like
breaking stuff

Al.

I still have a jar of KCN that I borrowed from my 6th form college.

20 years old but unopened.

Adam

When I were a lad we barely had electricity
You had electricity?

Barely.

My school was so poor that we were told that *infinity* was some place in
Guildford.

A few other 'schoolboy' horrors:

We (that is a bunch of Neds and I of around age 11) used to like invading
the building site down the road. I once nearly got caught by the rozzers
while tightrope walking across the rafters in a 3 storey building (no
floors/ceilings in place). Falling would be certain death. The rozzers
never caught me though

We (that is a bunch of Neds and I of around age 11) also used to light
"camp fires" on building sites. We had (have!) a secret method of
contructing the fire. Usually involved any old bottle of oil, some rags,
some bricks, Swan Vesta's ...

Ah, Swan Vestas ... The deliquents delight! Can be 'struck' on anything.
The head can also be wrapped in a bit of foil to make cheap bangers As
for 'caps' ... The kiddy ones on a reel of paper or the bigboy ones in a
magazine of red plastic. That really sorted the men from the boys.

Gosh. Other stuff. The nitro made by a friend. The near drowning with the
home-made bridge ...

Kids today have no fun

Al.

On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:18:06 +0100, Clint Sharp wrote:

Iodine and ammonia was fun too, nice little clouds of coloured smoke but
a tad unstable when it dried out.

Ah yes - ammonia and HCl in evaporating dishes side by side. Filled the lab
with 'smoke' and contaminated all the glassware.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

On 19 July, 20:52, Al wrote:
When I were a lad we barely had electricity
You had electricity?

Barely.

My school was so poor that we were told that *infinity* was some place in
Guildford.

A few other 'schoolboy' horrors:

We (that is a bunch of Neds and I of around age 11) used to like invading
the building site down the road. I once nearly got caught by the rozzers
while tightrope walking across the rafters in a 3 storey building (no
floors/ceilings in place). Falling would be certain death. The rozzers
never caught me though

We (that is a bunch of Neds and I of around age 11) also used to light
"camp fires" on building sites. We had (have!) a secret method of
contructing the fire. Usually involved any old bottle of oil, some rags,
some bricks, Swan Vesta's ...

Ah, Swan Vestas ... The deliquents delight! Can be 'struck' on anything.
The head can also be wrapped in a bit of foil to make cheap bangers As
for 'caps' ... The kiddy ones on a reel of paper or the bigboy ones in a
magazine of red plastic. That really sorted the men from the boys.

Gosh. Other stuff. The nitro made by a friend. The near drowning with the
home-made bridge ...

Kids today have no fun

After reading about all the stuff you used to do...I agree.


Al.

On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:23:21 +0100, Tim S wrote:

And did Davy hate Faraday?

only if it was the first day of the week.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.

Al wrote:

When I were a lad we barely had electricity
You had electricity?

Barely.

My school was so poor that we were told that *infinity* was some place in
Guildford.

Ah. I've been there. I think I know the exact spot..

I was a bit of a sod

A kindred soul

It took the caretaker a while to sort
things out and eventually he just changed every lamp on a circuit as
matter of course.

Bless. Our caretaker was Charlie Sparrow. I have a feeling that it wasn't
his real name, but it sort of fitted. Like Derek Guyler. His 'room' was
downstairs from the 'Upper 6th' common room. I think he hated us all.

I sometimes look back on the utter stupidity that I inflicted on the world
while I was at school and wonder if it was worth it. Yup. It was

Al.

I still have a jar of KCN that I borrowed from my 6th form college.

I've got a nagging doubt that I've still got a jar in the loft at my
parents place.

Given to me by some irresponsible bugger. My mother's brother to be precise
;-)

To be fair, he was/is some sort of chemistry wizard.

Or maybe he was lying ... ;-)

Al.

On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:18:06 +0100, Clint Sharp wrote:
I miss my childhood, I think I may have a second...

I don't think you're allowed one any more - the H+S brigade have outlawed
them...

On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:13:15 +0100, Graham. wrote:
Electrolytic capacitor on long wires out of the window. Plug into mains,
metallic confetti everywhere.

Yes, I remember that sort of thing well from electronics classes, although
we aimed them at the plasterboard walls in the lab.

I also cooked up a little oscillating device running from a 9V battery and
through a step-up transformer, then invited folk to prod the contacts - I
think the voltage it delivered was somewhere around 4KV.

Never did much with explosives, although I seem to remember half-baked
experiments at turning cans of deodorant into rocket engines.

cheers

Jules

"Al" wrote in message
. 4...
....
When I was there (first year I think), someone in the higher years had bet
20 quid that he wouldn't swallow some Potassium Cyanide (yes, there really
was that sort of stuff in the chem lab store room). Someone took the bet
on. He swallowed it. He died. By the time I was doing 'interesting'
chemistry there was nothing remotely dangerous left. ..

Must have changed the A level syllabus - potssium cyanide (in a bright red
bottle that we had to request from the lab technician) was an essential part
of at least one experiment. We were requested, rather than instructed (it
was probably more effective) not to dispose of cyanates down the sink, as
the local water authority had complained.

I used to make a primitive nitrocellulose during chemistry practicals, which
proved to be popular with my peers. Mind you, the girl next door, a couple
of years older than me, had started experiments of her own with me at an
early age, so I tended to have other interests than just blowing things up.

Colin Bignell