h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The world lost a potentially great sculptor the day the science faculty opened its doors to yours truly. On the other hand, medical science may profit from this someday.

To begin the story, I am the sort of person who has to have one cup of coffee in the morning for things to work out in a way that is even remotely normal. Having recently decided to wean myself off my dependency upon caffeine, I have been spending mornings without stimulant in my bloodstream. Which leads us to last Wimpy (er, that's Tuesday for you non-Thingites).

I'd decided to do a bit of plating in the morning so that I'd have a fresh new batch of microbes for my supervisor, who'll be dropping in this coming Wibble. Unable to locate a glass beaker for my alcohol (no, I do not drink in the lab. This was for sterilizing my glass rod over the flame of a Bunsen burner), I settled for a plastic one instead, being insufficiently conscious to realise the possible detriments of using plasticware in the immediate vicinity of a flame.

After I'd flamed my glass rod for the last time, I replaced it in the beaker and lowered the cabinet hood, and brought my agar plates to the incubator. Upon returning to the safety cabinet, I was mortified to find a tidy flame flickering happily over a pool of spilled alcohol as my plastic beaker was slowly fizzing and being reduced to a lump of - plastic.

I had, admirably, the presence of mind to stop the fire by placing a container over it. Deprived of oxygen, the fire burned itself out... leaving me with a glass rod permanently fused to an anomalous lump of plastic - which would certainly have won awards had I belonged to a completely different faculty.

sounds like you had great fun!! and surely you can still enter it for awards-it will be even more prestigious as you havent had any training!

This just made my day. I'm incredibly happy now....
ANd I agree with Hannah-having had no training should make your career as a modern artist more appealing to public/judges.

muchas gracias! would it surprise you to know that my best friends also have the tendency to set things on fire? (by accident, of course. we're not talking about arson) only the last time it happened, the alcohol was in a *glass* beaker, and it was standing on our table, *and* it was my friend tycho who set it on fire the same way i just did. you can imagine the flames....

we had a chemistry disaster once when using metal spirit burners. this group got the splint out to light theirs, and the flame somehow got sucked inside, and the (strong, metal) burner *shattered*, throwing burning alcohol everywhere!

Oh dear. I hope we don't have any of those at my school. (as usual, I'm too young to be in chemistry yet) All we're allowed to use this year is alcohol burners, small glass ones with a wick you have to adjust by hand.
My story I didn't witness personally, but anyways. I'm sure I told you about sludge, the separating and identifying practical exam that is in place of our midterm. One group, to which an aquaintence of mine belongs, dropped a match in their liquid and burned off all the alcohol. Let's just say that if it's all been burned off there's not much left to measure or identify.
And then what's fun is the density unit-to see if propane is lighter or heavier than air. My teacher stoppered the sink, put some propane in it, and dropped in a match. I sit closest to the sink, too. Conclusion: propane is more dense than air, but less dense that the stuff the sink is make of. (which, we also learn, is not flammable)

more on fire:

this is a story my senior (from the chemistry department) told me. they'd been working with a group of organic chemicals called hexanes (don't worry, you'll get there jen), and their lecturer had told them repeatedly to KEEP IT AWAY FROM THE FIRE. one boy was apparently dense enough not to take it seriously. you know that bit in 'independence day', where fire shot down the street? yeah, they had a backflash like that zipping through their laboratory... it was a miracle nobody got hurt, otherwise the boy would've won a darwin...

Sounds almost as exciting as the first time I dropped a chunk of pure potassium (or, was it sodium), into a test tube full of sulphuric acid. I got a nice little roman candle effect in the middle of chemistry class. Never did cop to it.

But the artwork sounds a lot like that my mom used to proudly display, anytime she left various combinations of plasticware on the pilot-heated surface of her gas stove. It was often quite striking.

you know, our teachers/lecturers never let *us* do that! the high point in our high school science class was when our *teacher* dropped very small chunks of pure sodium and potassium into a tub of water (that's rather hard to say! here we just call them natrium and kalium - guess the people who wrote our textbooks were too lazy to have the teachers teach us all the different names).

speaking of which, i once had hydrochloric acid fizz onto my hand during chemistry class because i was holding it while my friend dropped something into it (i can't remember what). i'm not sure if it was because of slow reaction time or level-headedness that caused me to hang on to the tube, thus saving the class a bit of money...

wouldn't that do something to your hand then?

But natrium and kalium-I believe those are the names the chemical symbols are from, yes? So why do *we* call them anything different?
I would like to drop sodium in water. I have heard that it makes quite a nice effect. (Renee's dad, my uncle, is a chemist, and we were talking about this once at dinner)

re: natrium & kalium - beats me. yeah, they're the chemical symbol names. no, i don't know why they call it sodium and potassium... it's likely that people had been calling them that for ages before somebody decided to standardise things in chemistry. it would make an interesting little article.

re: acid - it would have probably burnt a hole through my hand if not for the fact that it was a (thankfully!) relatively weak 1-molar solution. i had, fortunately, the presence of mind to hurriedly bung the test tube onto a tube rack and stick my hand under the nearest faucet and run water over it... i will *never again* trust that friend, though!

yes, you *would* like to drop that chunk of sodium into a basin of water, wouldn't you? back then i used to envision my own brand of caesium bombs (they're a heck lot more reactive, you know?) - a capsule of pure caesium suspended in a large container of water in such a way that the capsule would break open upon impact, releasing the caesium (!!!) into the water. i was very destructive *then*.

Yes, I would.
And with my limited knowledge of chemistry soduim sounded good. But I'll take your word about caesium. (BTW, I think here we call it cesium-the ae dipthong was eliminated in the americanization of english, considered unnecessary and removed to simplify the spelling, also like colour verses color.)
Are you implying that *then* is different than *now*?