He SMOKED Brake Cleaner

This is an episode in the Extreme Chempilation series - expect mild profanity and stories that some viewers may find disturbing.
Summary
This video discusses various dangerous and reckless activities involving chemicals, highlighting incidents such as smoking brake cleaner, touching a red-hot stand, chewing burnt flesh, a steam explosion, burning oneself with isopropanol, explosive experiments with acetone, glycerin mishaps, poor hygiene practices, broken glassware due to shaking a test tube, drinking pure alcohol, and handling dry ice unsafely. The dangers and potential injuries associated with these activities are emphasized throughout the video.
Highlights
💥 Smoking brake cleaner as a fuel for a cigarette
🤚 Touching a red-hot stand and chewing burnt flesh
💣 Steam explosion due to a superheated experiment
🔥 Burns from handling isopropanol and explosive experiments with acetone
💦 Glycerin reacting with nitration mix, causing nitrogen dioxide release
🧤 Poor hygiene practices leading to chemical contamination
🧪 Accidental transfer of a chemical causing numbness in sensitive areas
🧪 Nail going through a test tube while shaking it
🍺 Drinking pure alcohol in a lab experiment
🧪 Ethanol theft and missing containers from chem stores
❄️ Dangerous effects of dry ice on skin and metal
💥 Unsafe handling of dry ice and liquid nitrogen leading to explosions
(The 'Summary' and 'Highlights' were generated using Glarity)
DO NOT EAT OR DRINK OR SMOKE LAB CHEMICALS! 💀💀💀
I want to give a huge thanks to all the supporters of the channel on Patreon!
/ thatchemist
The supporters on Patreon have decided to release the Patreon chempilations! We will be gradually releasing them after they get some minor editing. These will be known as Extreme Chempilations.
This was the September 2022 Patreon Chempilation, until the Patrons changed the way things work :)
Join the Community Discord! - / discord

[@circeciernova1712]

There's a saying among blacksmiths: "Beware black iron!" If it looks normal, it could be room temperature, it could be -10⁰, or it could be _just_ below the temp to emit black body radiation.

[@filiphabek271]

My grandpa worked in a truck repair facility, there was crime (probably some kind of revenge) once, balls for ball bearings (I think) would be rolled from one side of the building for the guy on the other side to catch them, once, someone heated the ball just short of glowing-hot and rolled it (he obviously used gloves, hands normally were uprotected) and skin of receiving guy sticked and peeled off from his hand. They never found who did that.

[@saudade7842]

Yeah, that's why when I don't use tongs I hold my hand near it to sense heat, tap it once or twice, and then grab it before working

[@filiphabek271]

@@saudade7842 good

[@saudade7842]

@@filiphabek271 I also poke a wood burner as a kid with literally no thoughts in my head. It left a visible yellowish fingerprint on the burner, and it took a while to get my fingerprint back lol

[@brainandforce]

The chemists' equivalent is "hot glass looks like cold glass"

[@NautsuJJR]

finally, the well deserved sequel to glue huffing

[@jameslayman]

Glue huffing works better tho

[@tomkerruish2982]

I thought it was the sequel to drinking acetone.

[@thesledgehammerblog]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

[@circeciernova1712]

Nah, the sequel to glue huffing is huffing the refrigerants from someone's AC system. They occasionally find some dumb kid dead with his lips still on someone's AC piping.

[@bcubed72]

@@circeciernova1712 I mean, CFCs are...inert, so it seems the only "high" you'd get from refrigerants is from O2 deprivation.

[@CoastalSphinx]

The university I attended had a big lecture hall attached to the chemistry building, and at some point, somebody left a small cylinder of anhydrous HF in one of the storage cabinets. Eventually the cylinder corroded to the point of rupture and rapidly discharged its contents. By amazingly good luck this happened at around 2 AM on a Sunday so nobody was nearby. Considering the lecture hall had about 200 seats, it could have been an absolute disaster.

[@Kualinar]

YIKES !!!!!!☠☠☠

[@bentuttle9170]

Holy mass casualty, Batman, that's absolutely terrifying!

[@gingermcgingin4106]

That's some Hitman shit

[@infernaldaedra]

Yeah a beaker of hf cant hurt 200 people lol

[@toyocolla]

This reminds me of a friend who smoked brake fluid daily. It was a problem, but he said he could stop anytime.

[@bcubed72]

Happy early Father's Day, Dad-joke Man!

[@magicsasafras3414]

Lmao

[@williamrosenbloom215]

I wanna steal this but I'm gonna have to wait so long for someone to talk about smoking break fluid.

[@knucklesskinner253]

dot like: 🤷‍♂️

[@helldad4689]

If this happens to you, just neutralize it with a nice fat joint rolled out of brake dust. It's called "the scientific method"

[@That_Chemist]

Brake dust 😂

[@T3sl4]

Now I'm reminded of the factoid "cigarettes used to have asbestos filters". And conversely for brake linings. You may be onto something.

[@koled224]

Meth-od lol

[@lorenzoweed2473]

Gotta get your daily asbestos dose

[@travisahhs11]

My shirts scientific method says number 1: f--- around, number 2: find out. Very relevant to the situation here :)

[@SuperLuminalMan]

"The burned hand teaches best" hahaha, it should be "Life is the hardest teacher, it gives the test first, and the lesson after"

[@fungustober]

The mention of Butane and lighters reminded me of a story from years and years ago, which I call The Butane Incident, and has remained a story I like to tell every so often. Back when I was in high school, I decided that I would go out and be a counselor at a local Boy Scout summer camp. Now, every year after all the kids had left for the season, the staff would hold a big bonfire, which we technically weren't supposed to do but did anyway. This other staff member had gotten a giant stuffed Pikachu from some sort of carnival game and brought it to the camp. This staff member did not like this giant stuffed Pikachu, and wanted it gone, so the big bonfire seemed like a good choice to get rid of it with. This guy also had a Butane lighter, along with refill cartridges full of Butane that he could plug into the end of his lighter and fill it up with. One day after a bunch of us staff had finished working, he decides that he wants the giant stuffed Pikachu to have a much more fiery death, and he cuts open the back of the Pikachu, pulls out one of the refill cartridges, and begins to fill up some plastic gloves with them before shoving them into the back of the Pikachu as me and a few other members of the staff watch. At some point, he realizes that he should test all of this first before putting a bunch of gas into the Pikachu's back and he grabs a gallon bag, then partially fills it with Butane, which condenses inside the bag. He sets the gallon bag on the ground, stoops down, and flicks his lighter on. All of a sudden, FWOOMP! The bag has become a miniature fireball. This spooks the guy, so he goes to put out the bag fire. Now, what do you think this guy decides to do to put out the fire? Yes, that's correct. He stomps on it. Onto the gallon bag filled with Butane. Which opens, sending Butane gas out. Onto his leg. Which is now on fire. I have never seen someone fulfill all three steps of stop, drop, and roll so quickly before. Luckily, he managed to do it quick enough to where he wasn't actually injured by the fire, but all of the hair on the leg he had used to stomp on the bag was bleached. Recognizing what had just happened, he decided to remove all of the plastic gloves from the Pikachu's back and popped them to make sure that all of the Butane was gone. Later, when the bonfire was lit, this guy took the giant stuffed Pikachu and threw it onto the pile. We watched as it slowly burned away, and I even managed to record it on the flip phone I had at the time, but the footage is now sadly lost. Moral of the story: You don't fuck around with flammable gasses.

[@kaboom4679]

Scout camp , butane , wasn't expecting a Pikachu , honestly .

[@RCM442]

Always good when a new chempolation comes out

[@Nukestarmaster]

If you do the "dry ice in sealed bottle" thing, you should probably have a bb gun (or even a firearm) for manual detonation. Approaching a bomb is a bad idea.

[@Yostuba]

Its perfectly safe to kick/pick up and throw, everyone knows it wont detonate till hitting the floor. Its not a dud it just needs futher mixing with some good ole elbow grease.

[@tomkerruish2982]

Or just be patient. In my experience, liquid nitrogen takes about fifteen minutes in air... or mere seconds in water. (You need to tie it to something heavy, like a lead brick, to make it sink.)

[@bcubed72]

On slow days at the lube shop, we'd tap and thread air chucks on bottle tops, then connect an empty 2L pop bottle to shop air. It was fun! We could occasionally set off car alarms at the fast food place across the street.

[@petevenuti7355]

In an incident involving a tree stump and a hole drilled into it (not saying what it was filled with) hole being blocked by piling 2 80lb bags of concrete on top... After waiting a full minute after it didn't go off, I started to peek out from behind my shield... VaBoom.. I had white hair and a clear line of mortar mix dust across my forehead, the part at that time outside the shield, looking like the negative image of the line you get in sunburn when you wear a cap all day, ... just above my eyes... The cloud of mortar mix covered the whole block, dusted everything, only 2 small bits of paper remaining from the ends of the second bag... The tree stump however was unscathed....

[@petevenuti7355]

As for dry ice, when I went to Woodstock 94 in Saugerties, I packed my cooler with dry ice, before the fences came down the security guards wanted nothing to do with searching through dry ice, "latex gloves are not adequate" PPE for that they declared.. I did all the usual tricks , apparently people taking hallucinogenics find the tricks more fascinating than children do.. My girlfriend however was unimpressed... and unamused. Especially after a 'freezer burn'...

[@antonoboy1]

I have a bachelors in chemistry (later switched to comp science, currently finishing my master's). I have some great stories lol. Can't share them all here, but here are some of the interesting ones that I can share 1. I once got 2nd degree burns (and spots that were 3rd degree burned) on my face from saturated nitric acid. I worked a student job as a lab-worker at a chemical plant, performing routine analyses. It was my 2nd day and 1st full workday. I performed an analysis where at a certain step I had to add 5ml or smt (don't remember exact quantity) of nitric acid to each sample (in test-tubes). This was done through a dispenser-pump on a large vat. Midway through this step, it was break-time. I went on my break and returned to my lab bench. Without knowing, in the meantime someone replaced the vat and there was a small cap on the end of the dispenser pump where the hno3 comes out. I press the pump and feel a pressure build-up and no nitric acid came out. I pressed a bit too long, thinking it was friction or something, before I quickly realized this was dangerous (the procedure had become so routine I forgot that I was working with concentratic nitric acid..) however, as luck may have it, it was too late. As I let go of the pump, suddenly the cap flies off from the pressure-buildup, splashing nitric acid everywhere. Mainly on my face. I quickly felt a slight burning/tingling sensation but not too bad at first, luckily I had my lab-glasses and coat on (the acid splashed on my glasses and the burn-pattern later stopped right below where my glasses were, I would've been blind in 1 eye if I hadn't worn my glasses). I immediately realized what happened and knew time was of the essence, rushed to my supervisor, walking very fast, but not running (dangerous in a lab). I was very brief "I got HNO3 on my face, where is the nearest tap and eye-shower for face" I exclaimed (I wasn't very familiar with the whole lab yet..), this was very fast (it took me less than 30sec to get to the tap-water). I immediatly started rinsing and kept going for minutes. The supervisor came and it was decided I had to go to a hospital, they asked whether to call an ambulance or get company medical transport, but it would take them 10+minutes. It was at a remote industrial area. I was by car and could drive myself. It was decided that I would be helped faster if I drove myself (stupid decision in hindsight, should've waited for ambulance and kept rinsing.. also very bad decision by my supervisor) by this time the acid was starting to hurt and burn and I knew that the longer I waited the worse, I rushed to my car and drove to the hospital, the only hospital in the city which has a department specialized in chemical burns. I speeded a lot and drove not safe at all. It was even worse when for a moment I got stuck in traffic and had to find parking. It took me 20minutes to drive to the hospital, the acid kept burning and the sun was shining. I sprinted into the emergency room as fast as I could, excused myself and skipped the line where some people where being helped (the people in line had minor injuries like broken bones, time is less important there..) and immediatly said "I got chemical burns from nitric acid and need immediate treatment and immediate access to a shower to rinse!". They luckily didn't mind me skipping the line and understood the urgency, immediatly brought me somewhere to keep treating the wounds, a doctor came quickly afterwards.. I got treated at a center for burns paid for by company insurance and got financial compensation. I made a full recovery, the small spots that were 3rd degree burned (ironically the ones that hurt the least, since the skin is fully dead and litteraly turned black) remained visible for longer, but after a long time (1year) went away.. Now nothing is visible. The recovery was painful for some days/weeks and it looked horrible. I also didn't go into the sun with my face for a year.. (to avoid scarring) 2. A seperation column filled with toluene once broke, soaking a lab-partner in toluene. 3. DCM (CH2Cl2) spills... this chemical is so common in organic chem, you become desensitized to its dangers, after a while you stop caring if you splash a bit onto your hands.. especially if you slept little and just want to get done with your lab.. but the chemical is really NOT healthy.. 4. I once left the tap open of a separation funnel open during organic chem lab and poured in my product. It spilled all over my lab bench. Normally our instructor wouldve litteraly had us start all over or fail us if we didn't have the time. I already spent 3hours in the synthesis process and didn't want to start over. I took a fine glass pipette and sucked up the liquid (and contaminants) from the lab bench, milliliter by milliliter and put it back into the separation funnel.. My yield was gonna be horrible and the product would be dirty, but at least I could continue.. In the end after many more steps and purification of the final product I somehow still got a pretty clean product and had a better yield than some others (but still not good..) 5. I once lit my shoe on fire during lab with diethyl ether.. long story, a bit too ashamed to explain, I was a bit dumb I have more stories but can't remember them all and some I can't share..

[@_smerte42]

When I was in 8th grade a girl in my science class didn't understand basic lab safety and decided to take a sniff of ammonia. Smelling ammonia can cause severe irritation to the eyes, nose and throat. It can also cause coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath, It's surprising that she's even allow to work on the lab.

[@That_Chemist]

in my biochem lab there was someone who would pour ammonium chloride with hydroxide into the sink without running the water...

[@honja6528]

​@@That_ChemistI mixed calcium ammonia nitrate with lye then closed the bottle, but before I added the ether I had to go to the bathroom and when I got back I opened the bottle and swushhh ammonia gas right in my face, I remember putting the bottle down then breathing like a fish out of water eyes watery dizzy and I had tunnel vision for a second, I can't believe I did not pass out that day

[@honja6528]

​@@That_Chemist I smelled chlorine gas before it was strong but not close to ammonia gas

[@thor1829]

​@@That_ChemistWhen cleaning out permanganate/manganese oxide with HCl, I accidentally huffed chlorine gas. It was not very pleasant to say the least.

[@gatergates8813]

I worked at a farm supply store when I was younger, they occasionally had rail-car sized tanks of anhydrous ammonia on site, even upwind from them, the smell was unbelievably intense. There was an old guy named Brad who would climb right up on top of the tanks to hook up the output lines, no respirator or nothing, and he must have had lungs of steel because it didn't seem to affect him at all

[@purplealice]

I was in Advanced Placement chem in high school, and we were bused to the other high school lab, and we just hung around until class started. Someone learned not to wipe up a small amount of powdered red phosphorus with the same wipe that had just wiped up ammonium nitrate.. Crumple the wipe and the mixture explodes. Someone made up the mixture and then filled thin glass Xmas ornaments, and then tossed them out the third floor window. They locked the phosphorus in the school safe after that.

[@SableDrakon]

To quote Tom: if you're doing energetics, it's okay to use the shitty plastic cup.

[@thor1829]

If that explodes the chance of getting seriously hurt is a lot lower than with glass or tin cans lol

[@antoniozavaldski]

Luckily that brake cleaner was flammable, flammable brake cleaner is just hydrocarbons, it's not much worse than ordinary lighter fluid. Non-flammable brake cleaner contains chlorinated solvents like perchloroethylene, and exposing those to a flame produces phosgene which is a *really bad idea*.

[@mfbfreak]

Brake cleaner is mostly hexanes and pentane i think. At least the flamable kind. The non (or less) flamable type consists of chlorinated solvents which are Very Bad to smoke, but are probably impossible to light with a flint.

[@gtickno2946]

When I was a kid, my dad had a joke that dry ice was the second most dangerous substance in the world (with the most dangerous being plutonium), and I realized in adulthood this caused me to be more afraid of dry ice than I probably should be, but at least it has the positive side effect that I'm never going to mess around with putting dry ice in bottles to make bombs

[@jamesphillips2285]

FOOF scares me more than plutonium. ("Sand Won't Save You This Time") think it is from the book titled "Ignition!" Edit: search results are saying the dangerous substance is chlorine trifluoride,

[@marklucium1639]

I remember one time in year 1 of college when we had to do the oxidation of ethanol to ethanal and ethanoic acid using potassium dichromate heating under reflux. We had several bunsen burners up and running in the lab, and our reflux apparatuses had these yellow clamps to hold the condenser and pear-flask together on top of a tripod being heated by the flame. Eventually, 10 minutes went by and i could smell burnt plastic, but i could not tell where it was coming from. I told my partner about it and we just kinda shrugged it off. Eventually our teacher noticed though, and we looked around for where the smell was coming from. We then realised it was from one of the groups with the bunsen flame going up the side of the apparatus, burning the plastic yellow clamps and melting them into what looked like american cheese. our teacher panicked and ran across to their table and tried to turn off the bunsen and rip off the flask but it spilt all over his shirt and the floor. We were all silent while one guy just went “ OOH!”

[@drrocketman7794]

Explosive expert here: the scariest sound you hear when dealing with explosives is... nothing. Now you have to approach a live explosive with the detonator in and figure out why it didn't go kaboom. There's supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom. It might kaboom as soon as you get there... Best way to deal with explosives is leave it to people who know what they're doing.

[@Krithalith]

First time seeing your face, didn't expect mr. Clean but quite fitting for a chemist I suppose :p. Love these videos!

[@That_Chemist]

Atm I have a beard - this was back in September :)

[@FirstLast-oe2jm]

Please Do Not The Chemicals

[@coeko]

Yes

[@gonun69]

My chemistry teacher wanted to demonstrate the explosive power of gasoline. So he put a few drops of it into an open can and put it on the table upside-down. It had a small home through which he lighted the mixture. It made a small bang and the can jumped up about half a metre. Another student that he had a second can that was a bit wider and asked if the cans fit into each other. They fit almost perfectly. So the teacher repeated the experiment, put instead of just sitting flat on the table, the can was now inside another can, effectively creating a barrel. The can shot up, went through a lamp sending glass shards everywhere, and punched a hole into the ceiling panel above. That was exactly one week after the same teacher set the smoke detector in that room on fire. He filled a test tube with candle wax, heated it to a boil and then submerged the lower half of thr test tube in ice water. The candle wax shot out, ignited and made a huge stream of fire. Unfortunately he aimed it directly at the smoke detector. Best teacher ever.

[@nonamegameryoutube3288]

Only commenting here to boost the algorythm :) In all seriousness though, I discovered the channel only recently and have binge watched it for the past three weeks. Idk what it is but the combination of dad jokes, geniune life experience and memes just screams at you to watch more of it. Thanks for educating everyone here in the most entertaining way possible and streghen me in my determination to pursue a carreer in the chemistry field. Cheers mate and have a good one

[@2727-k3n]

Dry ice bombs are classic! When I was 14 or so, I saw a King of Random video about making ice cream with dry ice, and had to try it. The ice cream was great, but we were left with almost a full cooler of dry ice for me, a budding scientist, to play around with. Inevitably, I decided to put a ton of dry ice into a 2L plastic bottle in the backyard. Nothing happened for a while, save bulging on one side, so I went to go tap it with the handle of a mop. It blew into a million pieces as I got close - I slowly walked back to my dad (who greenlit the idea) with ringing ears (I couldn't hear anything). By some miracle, there were no plastic shards embedded in my winter coat or myself, and my hearing came back over the next several minutes. Experiment concluded, my dad said, "Yeah, don't tell your mom about this"

[@That_Chemist]

💀

[@fss1704]

Your dad was the shit.

[@samiraperi467]

Consensual cannibalism is not a thing I expected.

[@CoastalSphinx]

Consensual AUTOcannibalism, strictly speaking.

[@M_J456]

Definitely not even half as crazy as some of the stories out here, but I thought I'd share. I just finished my first semester of first year recently, and the amount of glassware that got broken in those labs was insane, you couldn't even go two minutes without hearing the shattering and cracking of glass. At that point just give us the plastic stuff since we clearly cant be trusted with glass. Also saw a LOT of people throwing chemicals down the sink that they shouldn't be throwing down the sink (i.e. lead iodide). You point it out to them to the best of your ability but at some point it's just impossible when you're trying to finish your own practical. I try not to think about it too much.

[@itsumayo]

Snorting medical byproduct cesium 137 sounds more sane than about half of these stories

[@clury9477]

I got a bunch of your tier list videos in my recommended and I don’t understand a lot of it but I love your videos, keep it up man :)

[@That_Chemist]

Awesome, thank you!

[@linuxguy1199]

0:46 Fellow mechanic here, we mechanics are special organisms that live in brake parts cleaner, I spray it on my dinner, I drink it, I snort it - everything - brake parts cleaner solves *all* problems.

[@stuntvist]

Old brake cleaners used to have TCE and DCM in them as the main ingredient, I think some still might use them. So there's a decent change the dude inhaled a load of phosgene; not a very bright idea.

[@JulianA-tr6pt]

It flamed in a zippo, so it was the non-chlorinated type. No TCE, no Perc, definitely no phosgene. Lighting a cigarette with acetone, toluene, and whatever else isn't a great idea either though.

[@huzzzzzzahh]

Worth mentioning that in the US it’s illegal in most jurisdictions to make any kind of explosive device by pressurizing a closed container. So dry ice, liquid nitrogen, etc in closed bottles are all illegal. Of course a small plastic bottle full of dry ice used as a science demo is not against the *spirit* of the law, it is still against the *letter* in most places, and a sufficiently grumpy cop can easily fuck your day up over it.

[@hicknopunk]

When I shoot off fireworks in our rural area, I have a piece of one inch thick, oak plywood. It has basic feet to stand, I light the fuse and duck behind the plywood. Then you can stay really close to the mortars and not run away each time.

[@yasminakudryavtseva29]

My knowledge of chemistry is limited to one mandatory high school course. Still, it's incredibly interesting to listen to you talk about what I assume to be pretty advanced chemistry and pretend like I know what's going on. I eagerly await the next video I will absolutely not understand yet enjoy immensely!

[@malorika]

That charred flesh cannibalism story reminds me of a story my dad told me. When he was at parties, he would put his hand on a stove burner and let his skin burn as his party trick. Once he did it at a fire. He told me about the smell of it and how people were horrified of it. I decided to do something similar one day with my friends. I used a lighter, burnt my finger a bit, then had my friends smell it. Then I chewed off the charred skin.

[@That_Chemist]

💀

[@jessicaiwanowski8946]

Dry ice bombs are classic childhood mayhem. I used a lot of dry ice for quick freezing aliquots in a previous job, and often enjoyed putting a piece of dry ice in a small beaker and listening to the glass ringing. Also, can't forget all the airbending with the fog.

[@ferrarirobin]

When i was like 8 years old or something, me and my friend decided to make a chemical cocktail with all the chemicals and cleaning products that were laying around in our garage. On hindsight, bad idea. Our first cocktail was kinda cool when we set it on fire. I remember specifically that it was a red flame with bright blue orbs flying out of it. So we decided to make a second one, but with some different products. We were adding a lot more things than the previous one. I stumbled upon a certain drain cleaner, so we added a little of that as well. The second we added it, our cocktail started sizzling and the cup we poured it into instantly became super hot to the point we couldn't even touch it... It scared us so we just left it in the garage and acted like nothing happened. The next day i went back to that cup and it was still hot! I left it where it was and after a few days a rubbery substance formed at the bottom. Turns out this drain cleaner was 95% sulfuric acid! Kids are so stupid sometimes...

[@VinsCool]

Thanks for sharing the exclusive videos! Also, oh god, smoking cancer, I hope this was not carcinogenic!

[@chrisb3585]

Ah, dry ice. We occasionally get samples or reagents delivered in dry ice which did lead to a few pranks in our microbiology/pathogen lab, where one would take a dry ice pellet, place it in a plastic 2ml centrifuge tube (with a resealable lid) then drop the tube into an unsuspecting coworker's lab coat pocket, cue a very loud pop, and a surprised scream.

[@Xe4ro]

Just quickly googled brake cleaner and that really doesn’t seem like something you’d want to smoke or otherwise ingest, especially if it was chlorinated. Yikes

[@seamuscavanaugh5933]

appreciate you putting the thumbnail story first

[@vonvonkarmz]

not a chemist, but remembering my old barista job. worked under the table, got my tips dipped into by my boss, wasnt told when id be off until the hour before i thought i was gonna leave, yadda yadda. my last day of work ended when during our always very rushed closing shift. i was being rushed around to hell and back, so needing to handle food after putting bleach in a mop bucket, i didnt have time to wash my hands so i quickly used sanitizer. hands started burning from chloroform. luckily i was smart enough to run my hands under cool water. no lasting damage, but my hands were raw and red the entire week after. lets just say my resignation was me just running out of the store the beginning of the next shift because i couldnt take it anymore

[@That_Chemist]

💀 that is BRUTAL - glad to hear you’ve moved on to greener pastures

[@21starsinthesky97]

I've got 2 stories The first one isn't chemistry related but is the reason I wear PPE religiously. I was in a high school robotics class and needed to cut a structural piece out of a sheet of metal. My school's maker space had a tool that would cut sheet metal by clamping it in place and pulling the lever attached to the blade down. I wasn't wearing any sort of eye protection because I was being stupid and thought I could get away with it. While trying to cut the sheet I noticed some stuff resistance in the lever. I was hesitant at first but eventually put my whole weight on it. All of a sudden there was a snap and a piece of metal flew by my face. Apparently there was a saw blade stuck in the tool's mechanism that had snapped when I forced the lever down. I always wore PPE after that. My second story is from my high school chemistry class. We were doing our topic on energetics and our teacher had us do an experiment involving barium hydroxide and ammonium chloride to observe an endothermic reaction. One of the guys in the front of class and the bright idea to create a line of barium hydroxide on the table because it looked like a drug. Needless to say the chemistry teacher was livid and lectured everyone on safety. Apart from that the class went on without incident (though I had to pull out 2 medical masks I had in my bag since COVID due to the overwhelming smell of ammonia)

[@fss1704]

mri ready.

[@whatevernamegoeshere3644]

I remember a demo at school where a mat sci lecturer came from a local uni and showed us some interesting things like why overhead powerlines are sandblasted and how it prevents ice build-up, different ceramics, measurements, chunky metal bars that came from a tensile strength meter and looked absolutely devastated after many tons of pull were applied to them, we were also the chem and bio classes so we had a blast, really. The true blast though, that came when the guy showed how materials behave at cryogenic temps and while he had the LN2 out he put some in a bottle to show us how much pressure it can take and make a rocket from it. He added it, put a nozzle on it, shook it and it just almost instantly went off in his hand. Loud bang, cloud of vapour and a guy trying to act cool about it. Nobody was hurt but THAT was a good demo of how badly tensile strength changes at low temps lol.

[@Yand57738]

Could you do a little more explaining in these stories? I notice you do a little but for the funny/best stories go over the chemistry in-depth for a couple sentences (like compound diagrams would be dope as a reference for the brake cleaner smoke)

[@tyrlant2189]

It is REALLY fun to use just enough dry ice so that the bottles don't explode, then shoot them to make them explode.

[@daemonburns-waight2421]

Damn... I cleaned my pipe with brake cleaner once as I was out of methylated spirits, but I made sure to flush it with gallons of hot water followed by an ISO rinse just to be sure I got it all out.. And I was still paranoid about the whole ordeal.. I can't imagine intentionally heating and inhaling that shit .. And the Darwin award goes to...

[@ADHD1080P]

Aight but did the brake cleaner work as well as the iso would have by itself? Asking for a friend lmao

[@anetkajerabkova19]

I went to an afterschool chemistry thing at local (read biggest in the country) uni and when we were talking about boiling chips, the lector said they have at least 1-2 explosions a semester because someone forgets them and gets suprised by hidden boil.

[@Evelaraevia]

When I was a child I was really interested in dry ice at one point, so my father bought some and we played around with it, safely. ya know, making smoky water, carbonating some water, etc. Before we got bored of it though, he thought it would be a good idea to put it in a plastic bottle and seal it. We all knew what to expect, but it was a small bottle and we filled the bottle too much. Luckily, as soon as he sealed the bottle he tossed it outside and as soon as it hit the ground a second later it exploded. No one came by the house after that fortunately but we didn't expect it to go off so quickly and never tried it again.

[@PentaSquares]

Sometimes I think about the time when one of my chemistry partners ate dry ice, despite being told not to. Nothing happened. He held it with his bare hands too. It was like normal ice I guess. I wouldn't do it myself. I always remember the first time I saw dry ice in kindergarten and the dry ice handler showed images of peoples burned hands after they touched dry ice. I've seen what happens when safety is not considered, so I always prioritize safety over everything else. This has angered quite a few people since I've turned off a lot of unaccompanied stoves and Bunsen burners. If you're gone longer than 2 minutes or so, I'm turning it off. Mind you, my Chen class was cramped and it was one Bunsen burner for every 2 people. Imagine 16 people cramped in a room the size of a small one person bedroom with that many Bunsen burners turned on all at once heating up hot metal. Also these are the same people who "flirted" in class, broke crucibles, and spilled chemicals like HCl on the floor without telling the teacher. I am amazed that I survive any of this.

[@Roadiedave]

Red hot ring reminded me of this thing I did back in the last week. I was cooking down some copper waste I had extracted from a silver purification reaction I had performed earlier, and wanted to see if I could also purify the copper carbonate and chloride I had leftover. Well...the chemistry was sound, and I had a crucible full of molten relatively pure copper (Copper carbonate will eat the carbon from the crucible to make Cu and CO2 gas). I stuck a stainless steel rod into the mix to stir it and clean out some of the slag, and of course the rod came out almost white hot. My magic gloves barely got warm. I set down the rod and took my gloves off to get the rest of my kit ready to pour. Well....the still glowing rod decided at that point to roll off my workstand, and I reflexively caught it with my bare fingers. It actually made a flash paper like pop, and I dropped it anyway. It didn't even hurt. My hands were pretty baked from smelting, and handling the crucible out of the furnace was hot enough from 18 inches away to require a foil shield around my tong hand. I think I baked my nerve endings. Anyways, I wasn't aware of any issues till I got a phone call that night, and couldn't answer my phone, because I had completely flash boiled my fingerprints off. I guess there are harder ways to become a secret agent, but my way is pretty.

[@wrekced]

One time I put dry ice in a 2 liter bottle, added about a cup of hot water and placed it on an injection molded plastic chair. The chair was gotten surplus from one of the local schools; so it was very sturdy. When the bottle blew, it destroyed the chair! The plastic of the chair was like 3/16" thick. After that I was a lot more careful about where I placed the bottle when making booms.

[@koled224]

If we've learned anything it's respect halogens and SET reactions are worse than a nuke

[@adam346]

Did food prep for some years... and routinely worked with hot peppers. Every few months we'd get a new guy and I would walk them through the steps... it was cold in the prep area (it was attached to a 500sq meter fridge after all) and sometimes we would wear cotton gloves under our blue gloves we used to handle peppers... well, a new guy shows up and thinks he's going to out-tough all of us old-timers and doesn't wear any gloves... ever. I tell him "hey, put on some gloves before you handle the peppers, k?" to which I get a "yeah, ok". I walk back 10 minutes later and he is halving and coring jalapenos with bare hands.. I ask "where are your gloves?" and he says "my hands aren't cold, it's all good"... I wasn't sure whether to tell him or not what he just did but before I could decide he goes to the bathroom... he went home early...

[@ChillWithRiley]

Ate crawfish one time and used the bathroom without washing my hands. Only PPE lesson I’ve ever needed.

[@kaboom4679]

Heard of a similar incident involving people mixing agricultural chemicals , not wearing gloves , or washing their hands , and then answering the call . The stuff in question was used to kill suckers on plants to prevent them from sprouting unwanted shoots . It was primarily a concentrated solution of fatty alcohols . Anyway , they had quite the painful experience , as the stuff burns like hell when you get it on tender areas and mucous membranes . I also heard of a similar story just from sitting on a case of the stuff that had a poorly sealed container. The pain is similar to Capsaicin and lasts longer .

[@Bentleyhbmntm]

I was making hydrbromic in my lab for some reason. was holding the flask I went to open the Chem cabinet and I sat it down and I went to pick up the hydrbromic acid and dropped it and it bust and went every where luckily for me I had a full level b hazmat suit but the floor did not have a hazmat suit and the floor of my home lab got destroyed

[@That_Chemist]

💀💀💀

[@AwestrikeFearofGods]

There are 2 types of brake cleaner, chlorinated (tetrachloroethylene) and non-chlorinated (various mixtures of acetone, toluene, methanol and aliphatic hydrocarbons and aromatic hydrocarbons). His was flammable, so it was a non-chlorinated formulation. If he managed to smoke chlorinated brake cleaner, you'd probably be getting his story second hand.

[@highvoltagemayhem3345]

Senior year of hs advanced chemistry and this is what the teacher had us do. This lady who im not gonna name had us go outside and collect some sand on a pan she robbed from the cafeteria. Once we collected the sand we all went up onto the fire escape balcony. Once there she handed a student a hair dryer and he proceeded to blow the sand off the balcony onto the poor guy weed eating down below. Our teacher from chem 1 was the man who invented the CdS detector for heat seeking missiles and let me tell you that class was a blast "litterally". Needless to say we were all very disappointed senior year.

[@torinnbalasar6774]

6:25 I used to use shampoo instead of body wash down under because hey: there's a lot of hair there too. Stopped after I got a slightly different one than my normal and it burned on contact. Don't know what they added to make it "sports", but the sack sure noticed...

[@Bludgeoned2DEATH2]

Regarding the Phenol story, in college my friend and I would also say that we’d be good chemists by washing our hands after lab and before peeing and also after peeing 🤣

[@Sniperboy5551]

To be honest, I also tend to bite off my own skin if I get a scrape or something. It’s nice and chewy, plus I get to recycle it!

[@PaulSteMarie]

Flammable brake cleaner is a mix of toluene, xylenes, and other light hydrocarbons. The chlorinated stuff is more toxic.

[@whoever6458]

Oh I've made the same "if it's not red, it's not hot" mistake with the oven. I guess I was hungrier for that pizza than I thought because I nearly had that hot pan all the way out of the oven and on top of the stove before the "ouch" reflex kicked in and I dropped it. I was still able to rescue some of it, thankfully, since I don't know how much worse my ability to think would have become had I needed to make more food. I had a pretty bad burn on my hand but it has long since healed after a good bit of peeling. I don't even have a noticeable scar because I've had too many other mishaps with my hands for that particular one to stand out.

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

Substituting aromatic compounds for part of the usual aliphatic naphtha in cigarette lighter fluid would be asking to get a more toxic than usual residue on your cigarette.

[@LenKusov]

The safety hack with dry ice or carbide pressure-vessel explosions is to squish the middle of the bottle and fold it so that the water's in the bottom half, and the gas-generating solid is in the top half, and they only mix once you let go of them like releasing the spoon on a grenade. That way, you can cap it off (like pulling the pin) and hold it safely for quite a while, but once you throw it, it unfolds and mixes the two together. Way safer than hoping you guessed your quantity right and you have enough time to get the cap all the way on before it goes off. Also, with carbide, you wanna use 1L or 20oz bottles instead of 2L bottles cause those hold enough pressure for the acetylene to start to explosively self-polymerize so you get WAY more bang out of em, they go off like beer can full of Tannerite.

[@singerofsongs468]

“I developed an interest in less painful methods and techniques.” Lmao!

[@Jawst]

I recently purchased 35 fire extinguishers of varying types for multiple purposes 😂 co2 has so many many uses! A new one I discovered is using co2 to get rid of moles! 😊 works a treat, and you can clearly see where their tunnels get close to the surface!

[@joshuab4586]

he only used the brake fuel to light cigarettes? i went to school with a guy who ended up smoking Raid that he crystalized on copper wire

[@That_Chemist]

💀👉👈

[@timun4493]

putting gasoline or another volatile and flammable liquid in a glass bottle and then placing the bottle in a camp fire is even more fun than dry ice, you usually get a couple of minutes to find cover, preferably behind a window were you can admire the resulting fireball, do use too much fuel, i think i used something like 50ml to 100ml in half liter bottles ;)

[@fake_plant]

I saw the title and was so bewildered that this could somehow happen by accident, and then I click, and it's not even an accident. I don't know why I expected anything else

[@That_Chemist]

100% its a 'play stupid games win stupid prizes' moment

[@aqdrobert]

Parents bought me a STEM chemistry lab when I was little. Friends came over, got burned, cut, poisoned. I never got hurt when I followed the enclosed instructions.

[@roxasparks]

4:25 that wooosh was me... thumb hurt for weeks. Nice and crispy

[@survivalstories5749]

Not 100% chemistry. But I once when I was 16-17 wanted to try nitrous (laughing gas) with friends, we had those pressurized metal capsules. I didn't have a proper opening device or whipping cream dispenser.. The best idea I had was to just pierce it with a drill/screw, whilst having a balloon over it. The drill would pierce through the balloon, but the idea was that the pressurized gas would freeze the small hole shut quickly enough. This actually worked... a couple of times.. However also got some cold-burns in doing so, could've been much worse. Wouldn't recommend..

[@lukebridges6888]

You need to update the chempolation playlist

[@m1n3craftPCtut0r1al]

Not just cannibalism but auto cannibalism. That’s gotta be some sort of bingo space on a card I have.

[@Mis73rRand0m]

I feel stupid posting this; but I once kicked a dry ice containing soda bottle because it failed to go off. I succeeded in recieving minor hearing loss and a giant "bruise" on my calf, with a nickel sized scar still visible over 16 years later. High school was a wild time for the nerds too.

[@50_foot_punch99]

Alright now now, brake cleaner does probably have the best burnt liquid smell

[@pancake4061]

You underestimate the complete lack of regard mechanics have for chemicals, despite knowing the dangers.

[@ProtoV33MK1]

Not a chemist, but I have my own mini story. Some time last year, I was digging through a box of batteries. They were the cheap dollar store ones, so of course some leaked, and the electrolyte got on my hands. Some of it soaked into the band-aid that I had on my thumb because I had picked it to bleeding earlier (I have anxiety, so skin picking is common for me). For whatever reason, I didn't think anything of it, not even to change the band-aid. I woke up the next morning with severe irritation on my thumb, which looked like it had been soaking in water for 2 days. There was no lasting damage after a day or two of pain. All my friend had to say about it was that I was a dumbass, which is fair. Moral of the story: Don't fool with leaking batteries, and if something gets onto your bandage, replace it. Chemical burns, even minor ones, suck.

[@Dommifax]

There is actually an alcohol used in some brake cleaners that can be used as a drug : 1,4 Butandiol is metabolised in stomach lining and liver toGHB

[@rey3472]

Perchloroethylene. When that is burnt one of the degradation products is phosgene.

[@scottinator1074]

Here’s how I discovered artificial sweetener doesn’t work for the taste buds in your lungs: In high school we were doing a very simple lab where we essentially compared the IMFs of various solid substances by seeing if the Bunsen burners could melt them. The procedure pretty much just involved blasting various compounds with the Bunsen burners and being clueless chemical students we had no idea how dangerous some of this was. One of the chemicals was aspartame and I had this on the burner when I leaned over it to absent-mindedly fix a questionable connection on the gas line. At this exact moment, the aspartame decided to decompose all at once, leading to me taking a nice, full breath of god knows what. Needless to say I was coughing for at least 15 minutes straight but my chem teacher insisted I would be fine and the experiment carried on…

[@markschwartz9905]

when I was REALLY little, I put a shotgun shell in a vice and squeezed it. Thank god it didn't blow up, but all the buckshot fell to the ground and I collected it. When my dad noticed it and asked me about it (he knew what it was anyways) I told him i put a shell into a vice, and he said "YOU DID WHAT????" good thing i put the long end of the shell into the vice, and not the metal part..

[@That_Chemist]

💀

[@JulianA-tr6pt]

Being flammable, the brake cleaner was probably acetone, methanol, toluene, and/or some other solvents. Non-flammable brake clean, on the other hand, is chlorinated. Tetrachloroethylene, also known as perc. Nasty stuff, quite a smell. It wouldn't have ignited in the zippo, of course. I've put contact cleaner in a zippo. I don't smoke, but the fumes were definitely offensive compared to zippo/camp fuel.

[@ThunderClawShocktrix]

that steam one YIKES any time you are going to heat anything past its boiling always have some sort of pressure relief set up otherwise you just made a bomb

[@1978garfield]

I was worried the smoking brake cleaner story would end much differently. Original formula Brakleen won't burn but breaks down in to phosgene when heated to 500 degrees or so. I don't know if a cigarette is hot enough to turn it to phosgene but obviously you don't want to inhale any of that. Welders have died by using tetrachloroethylene based cleaners to clean metals that they were going to weld. Phosgene is a rough way to go.

[@jovi_al]

dropout here (who was studying chem when she dropped out). the dumbest thing i ever watched in lab was simple, yet effective-- in my first year in undergrad at university, i watched in horror as my lab partner removed our beaker of nitric acid actively reacting with a decent amount of copper from the fume hood, and walked with it around the lab "showing" people. she was holding the beaker in front of her, and i don't think she ever understood why people were kind of horrified when she was approaching them. the person supervising the lab (i can't remember if it was a TA or an actual professor) didn't stop her, despite warning before the lab started that one shouldn't remove any of the equipment we were working with that day from the fume hood during the procedure. maybe the supervisor just thought "welp, i warned her. *shrug*"

[@TheCaptainLulz]

Flammable break cleaner is just light hydrocarbons, it should work just like regular fuel. The soot is probably from saturated hydrocarbons like butylene not burning completely. Hes going to be just fine. Probably tasted like shit though.

[@bcubed72]

Non-chlorinated brake cleaner is acetone, methanol, and/or toluene. Chlorinated brake cleaner is tetra-chloroethylene. The latter is much worse to combust, but fortunately it won't sustain combustion, so he almost certainly had the acetone (et.al.) product.

[@That_Chemist]

there are some older ones with DCM and trichloroethylene

[@plaincoils]

I always thought ‘IFAK’ meant ‘I f’d a kangaroo’ I guess there’s always something new to learn!

[@Vegalyp]

Still waiting for a video on Dimethyl Mercury. One of the most evil chemicaks ever.

[@questionablebackyardmeows]

you should collab with tales from the trip on some of these

[@yeoldebaccyfarm3081]

So to that ethanol story. At my uni the old chemistry department warehouse manager was apparently an alcoholic. So every year when they did their inventory check there was always ethanol missing for some reason.

[@dankk3858]

When I was about 12 our chemistry teacher performed an experiment where she dropped pieces of alkali metals into a tank of water. I was fascinated -I ordered some sodium on eBay. I was a bit of a pyromaniac back then and I started with putting small pieces of the metal in a pyrex measuring jug full of water. I eventually got bored of the small burning metal blobs zipping around on the water and my impulsivity got the better of me. I decided to toss my remaining sodium into the jug (it was well over 10 grams). Upon contact with the water, the sodium immediately exploded And my garden was peppered with burning molten sodium. Being young and extremely dumb, I wasn’t wearing any PPE and one of the burning droplets was flung straight into my face. I immediately ran to the nearest sink and rinsed my entire face. Somehow it caused no permanent damage (my eye and the surrounding skin only stung for a few hours afterwards) but I can safely say this was the most reckless decision I ever made. At least it made me understand the importance of wearing PPE as I ordered a pair of goggles to wear during my future questionable experiments.

[@fss1704]

Sheet, i won't even tell mine, i almost won a darwin awards once.

[@celexaprozac]

i was working in animal care at the time and we use a product called "accel" or "rescue" idk what they call it these days, its manufacturer is virox i think. which is concentrated hydrogen peroxide with a surfactant to make it evaporate quicker. we are supposed to dilute it down to 1:64 with water except for one piece of equipment which attaches to a hose to dilute it that way. i finished cleaning a room with the stuff and went to refill the mop bucket with what i thought was dilute 1:64th and was breathing pretty heavy because i was always barely getting done with my tasks, we were pretty overworked. so i dump out the whole gallon while trying to catch my breath as its the last thing ive got to do before i take my lunch and immediately get hit with the very clearly undilute solution by taking in several heavy breaths of it and rush outside onto the small connecting pathway and cough out my fucking lungs. 6 months later i still had a cough and was diagnosed with partial atelectasis, or a small portion of my lung had collapsed. its about one month post diagnosis, or about 7.5 months since the incident and i still wake up coughing a lot. though its relation is unknown i feel pretty confident the inhalation of accelerated hydrogen peroxide may have been the culprit considering id never had lung issues before. i never was able to find out what the concentration was and im wondering if their SDS sheet includes the dilute percentage or the raw percentage of concentration since we only ever used 1:16th dilution for parvovirus, coccidia etc and never the raw stuff. just got reminded of this by one of your videos and came to comment it on the most recent. i will also now be messaging my doctor to ask if this was the probable cause because right now theyre thinking its untreated allergies and i only now remembered. thanks that chemist ♥

[@ContaminatedBeef]

3:00 In high school we did a demonstration where you would pressurize a gatorade bottle with a glass syringe inside and observe how much the volume inside the syringe was reduced by the increased pressure in the bottle. The teacher said do not go past 90 psi in the bottle. I remember the gauge saying 115 psi right before our bottle exploded lol. No serious damage but our ears were ringing for a day and a bunch of nearby teachers in the building freaked out thinking there was a bomb or something Oddly enough the glass syringe only moved a few inches from where the bottle was and was undamaged

[@sazxcdewq123]

In 2001 a Polish phd chemist working in Łódź University (Ha! try to pronounce that) was drying 260 grams of ethylenediamine diperchlorate (160% as powerful as TNT, sensitive like nitroglycerin) that he preasumably used as a ligand in laboratory oven. He got disintegrated, his female assistant was seriously injured. Such are the dangers of too narrow specialization. Also, about 2006 a teenage ScienceMadness forum user "Phone" has allegedly died from pulmonary edema. In his final post, he talked about making oxalyl chloride by first photochlorinating dimethyl oxalate, then thermally decomposing it to phosgene and C2O2Cl2. 💀

[@enbycharlie6287]

I read the title as "brain cleaner" and like its not wrong

[@Alexander-cg1ey]

I admire that level of insanity. Will not try.

[@Gin-toki]

I like the phrase "do not smoke chemicals" as it means do not smoke anything at all! :P

[@danielcook4712]

These Remington me of my 11th grade chemistry class. I’m not sure why but we had a bottle of almost pure nitric acid. Our chemistry teacher one time showed us by diluting the acid and putting a penny in it in a time hood it released nitric oxide gas’s and dissolved the penny. We had a sub chemistry teacher that tries to show us the same thing one day but did not dilute the acid did not use the fume hood and was holding the beaker in his hand. He had nitric acid bubble out all over his hand. But didn’t notice until it started burning his skin.

[@27.minhquangvo76]

My meme about phosphates: Biology student: meh Chemistry student: smells skatole.