My Dad, again...
My father is a chemist by training. In the dim and distant, when he was a student, he found the formula for making the explosive used in cap-guns, devil-bangers and the like. It is apparently easy to make.

He and his fellow students would mix up a batch prior to a lecture, and fill the board rubber therewith. (I've no idea how, before you ask.) The lecturer would want to clear the board before starting and, as the rubber made contact with the board...

BANG!
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 14 Dec 2007, 14:32, 3 replies)

Like the Resident Loon said in a previous post
on Page 3, it's nitrogen triiodide. You make it up wet, apply it to the subject and wait for it to dry, whereupon it becomes a touch-sensitive explosive.

Marvellous stuff.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 14 Dec 2007, 14:34, closed)

Cool..
... Didn't see the Loon's. This QotW is moving soooo quickly, and I'm supposed to be at work...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 14 Dec 2007, 14:46, closed)

Another
good 'un that isn't worth it's own post -- recounted to me by the perpetrator.

Engineering lecture, circa 1972, with the least loved lecturer in the whole uni. He starts to write on the blackboard, and becomes rather confused as the piece of chalk starts smouldering.

It then catches fire and explodes, to the delight of the assembled masses.

They had taken *all* of his pieces of chalk, drilled the centres out, inserted a quantity of strike anywhere swan vesta match heads, and dusted the ends with chalk dust.

Apparently only one in six pieces of chalk *didn't* break when they drilled it, but they had to do all of them to be sure it would happen.

That's dedication to the cause. Engineers, eh?
(Exiled Youth [witty comment], Mon 17 Dec 2007, 8:00, closed)