KSB and Mr. D
School: A nice Somerset school in the countryside

Teacher: Mr D. Chemistry teacher, Fives coach and all round total god.

Imagine a man with the mannerisms of Doc from Back to the Future and a truly staggering ability to create some seriously powerful explosions.

Story 1: The Tin bomb.

Class enters and sits down quietly, (yeah right), Mr D enters and asks the class if they think Phil the noisy kid would be quieter if he lodged the fire axe in his skull. This is the sort of intro The D would come out with.
He duly asks us to copy the apparatus at the front of the class. We copy what looks like a large tin of nescafe and a gas tap with a hose leading up into the base of the tin.

Mr D explains that he will now demonstrate the optimum mixture for exothermic reactions using butane gas. I think it was butane. I think it was that but please correct me if I'm wrong. He then turns on the ghas tap and fills the tin with gas. About thirty seconds later he lights the gas coming from a hole in the lid of the tin. He then turns off the gas and removes the hose from the base. He then gets us all to stand back while grinning.

The flame burns lower...

and lower...

until you can hardly see...

BOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!

The whole tin goes up and out and fires the lid so that it rips off about three ceiling tiles and one of the girls pisses herself.

Class applauds and lesson procedes in similar fashion.


Story 2:

Health and safety rules change and it turns out that storing large lumps of Sodium, Pottasium and other even more reactive metals is now frowned on. (either that or Mr D. was in a very good mood). These, as we soon found out, are metals that react virgourously when placed in water, variously burning on the surface or exploding.

Mr D explains how these metals react and we each take a tiny amount of metal out their oil bath and place them into our large water baths and note the reactions like the diligent students we were.

Mr D then asks us to all step out of the class and make our way to the outdoor swimming pool, see where this is heading?

We all line up on one side and The D goes round the farside with several large glass jars full of very large chunks of metal and oil.

He then proceded to throw bigger and bigger chucks of steadily more reactive metals into the pool. Small amounts of these can cause a nice pop. A chunk the size of a mans fist will make a bang that drew half the other class rooms out to cheer him on.

Mr D. We salute you.

I heard he has recently retired and the teaching world is poorer for it. Cheers to the only man I've ever seen clean a fives court using hydrochloric acid and a mop.
(71 hour Ahmed wasn't working at, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 18:29, Reply)