Kick Me! notes and other practical jokes

[Karlos]

A few yeast back, I can remember some idiot semi-chavs back in my home town who used to throw airbomb fireworks from their car at passers by. They'd achieved some sort of noteriety in the locality having scared a few people half to death.

In a blinding bit of poetic justice, one of the retards in the  back tried to throw one at a bus stop where myself and a group of other people were waiting for the bus.

However, and I confess I'm at a loss of how he quite managed this, he managed to rebound it off the edge of the window and back into the car where it must have rolled under the front passenger seat or something.

I can remember seeing some frantic activity in the back for a few moments, then the car screeched to a halt as they were about to abandon it.

The firework detonated before they got the doors open, an ear splitting boom with an equally impressive thud that you felt in your chest. Every window was blown out and the occupants struggled out in a shell shocked stupor.

They were subsequently arrested at the scene :lol:

Life is so sweet sometimes!

[Karlos]

Yeah, it's only a pity they weren't seriously hurt. I'm also quite surprised - these things were pretty powerful (as anybody who has endured the chav shock and awe around bonfire night can confirm).

However, their cockiness and pride had taken a fatal blow.

[Karlos]

We used to fling liquid nitrogen (which was used for a lot of cold traps we had for low temperature volatiles) about in the lab. It's great stuff, instantly boils on contact with anything at room temperature.

Chucking a Dewar flask full into a bowl of warm water was a good way to scare the crap out of someone.

You can even fling it at each other and even juggle small quantities in your hands fairly safely (again it boils instantly, the resulting vapour layer insulates you from the cold, furthermore the heat capacity is not very great. Same theory as fire walkers) - lots of loverly contrails in the air where the moisture freezes out in the wake of a spray of liquid N2 droplets!

Of course, freezing someones chocolate bar (still in the wrapper) in a flask full until it became quiescent was also good fun. You then remove it and hammer it a little. The rock solid contents are as brittle as glass and shatter readily into granules which eventually soften back into a formless mush...

[Karlos]

Hell, 99% of us only signed up to study it under the false impression we'd get to blow stuff up, make bad smells, funny crystals and pretty colours...

He's long since retired, but one of the lecturers, Dr. Salthouse used to perform a "flash bang" show each year. It didn't vary much but it was always a good laugh.

The reality of studying was rather less fun. Plenty of bad smells, but if you blew something up, you'd know you really messed up your poject ;-)

As for the colours and crystals, rarely saw those in my field later on. Virtually every non-trivial organic chemical reaction produces the same brown oily crud that requires multiple filtration and purification stages that may result in crystals but unless they contain chromophores, colourless :-/

Oh well...Thanks to the tedium of purification and analysis, you can see why alternative sources of amusement were needed.

Actually, one reaction was really cool. Had to do a "Birch Reduction", which uses metallic sodium dissolved in liquid ammonia as a reducing agent. The metal actually dissolves, without significant chemical reaction (not like chucking the stuff in water ;-)) to give a solvated electron species that is quite simply the most intense shade of blue imaginable.

I had a bit too much of the stuff so I left the excess in a beaker to evaporate (it was in a fume hood, of course) and watched it as it grew more concentrated. It got to an insane  indigo blue then abrubptly became a fully metallic golden liquid after some critical concentration. Gradually this dried up leaving a mixture of sodium and various amide salts.

[Karlos]

@Kenny

Is there any secondary school / sixth form chemistry lab more than a few years old without such a scar? Alkali metal / water abuse is mandatory.

Our old A level teacher had a method of getting everybody's attention. He'd fill a plastic bottle (over a beehive shelf) with 7 parts oxygen and 1 part acetylene. Hed then don his earmuffs and goggles, put it atop a tripod and shove a prelit bunsen underneath.

You'd see where the dust had previously settled in any quantity whenever he did this as it fell from the blackboard, tops of cupboards etc., dislodged by the deafening bang :-)