More chemistry experiments
When I was working in a chemistry lab a few years back, I was doing experiments using diethyl ether, which is highly volatile and flammable. To make sure the ether is absolutely dry, sodium is extruded through a die into the ether bottle. But when the ether is finished, you have to fish out the sodium wire and put it into methanol, whereupon it bubbles away slowly and turns to relatively harmless sodium oxide.

This takes a while, so I decided to accelerate the process. I put some water into the sink (one of these big lab sinks) and tipped the sodium wire into it, along with a little dribble of ether in the bottom of the bottle. However, a little dribble of ether creates a lot of ether vapour, and a lot of sodium in water creates fire......

Fortunately I had my labcoat and safety specs on so I was unscathed!

Another of my chemical expoits was when my mate and I decided to do the aluminium/iodine volcano experiment. We'd come across a jar of powdered aluminium (not easy to get these days) and we had some iodine. So we mixed it up in the correct proportions, made it into a wee volcano and added a drop of water. We had this in the fume cupboard, as it produces a huge amount of purple iodine vapour. Unfortunately, the quantities we'd used were a tad excessive, and purple emanations could be seen from the fume cupboard vent on the roof (we went out to check!). The aluminium burned so violently it ruined the fireproof bench mat and I spent a long while with an alcohol soaked cloth rubbing resublimed brown iodine stains off the inside of the nice white fume cupboard.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 4 Mar 2004, 9:19, Reply)