Liquid Nitrogen Overpressurized and Exploded

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Original video of the sodium explosion: • UNCUT normalhastighed ...
I made this thumbnail with DOLL-E

[@lithiumferrate6960]

Spooky story: I mixed table salt and water in a chemistry lab without my gloves and safety goggles.

[@user-lv3ii5df9n]

That sounds incredibly scary you have guts man

[@ApostleOfCats]

Holy shit you’re lucky to be alive

[@dud3655]

Fr, the most exciting thing I did in school was dissolve a nail with copper sulfate

[@lithiumferrate6960]

@@dud3655 I made mercury with zinc and mercuric chloride solution. Most fun I had.

[@dud3655]

@@lithiumferrate6960 Still more interesting than the stuff I did at school. But, my teacher was pretty stupid, so I was allowed to take the leftovers home. Thus, I sepparated the sulfur and copper+iron powder and I still have a small bottle of the sulfur in my drawer, it probably wasn't very pure but alas

[@entothechesnautknight1762]

Ya know, I'm starting to understand why the mythbusters straight up shelved the episode where they tested how easily you could make explosives with household chemicals, considering the force unleashed by literally just pressurized air.

[@samiraperi467]

And then there's the exploding boiler episode.

[@oceanfur__0415]

that and some kids might want to try some of the experiments themselves.

[@sussyscylla3414]

I think there may be some other reasons

[@Dasycottus]

The sodium was simultaneously a safety fail and a safety win. It went wrong and created an explosion with glass shrapnel, but the prof had the good sense to get away from it and keep the class back!

[@LexYeen]

It was an excellent demonstration of why safety procedures and equipment exist!

[@Artemis-zl5cs]

On the note of the second story, Gold is quite conductive, and car batteries are known (and used) for their ability to provide lots of current! gold also has a fairly low melting point (comparatively), so it's no surprise that a wedding ring could melt in a situation like that.

[@sootikins]

Yep. There are reasons why industrial maintenance technicians wrap their wedding rings with vinyl electric tape if they can't or won't just take their ring off at work. Edit: They also don't wear watches unless they have an all plastic one.

[@xhawkenx633]

Though liquid gold like mecury an most other liquid metals don't actually wet skin, so the heat transfer from the liquid gold to the skin is reeeeeeally bad, so it is actuslly unlikely to get dramatic burns through gold droplets splatterig on your skin

[@JGHFunRun]

Lower conductivity would actually melt faster, lower conductivity=higher resistance. Higher resistance means more of the energy is converted to heat, rather than just being passed through. Although the lower resistance allows it to deliver more current so maybe the increased current delivery counteracts the higher efficiency

[@sootikins]

@@JGHFunRun P = E²/R Therefore the more conductive (the smaller is R) the metal, the more power dissipated as heat.

[@phizc]

@@sootikins connect an iron nail to a car battery with equal diameter copper wires, and tell me which heats up most.

[@DrewskisBrews]

The pigment Prussian Blue (potassium hexacyanoferrate) is considered non toxic. It is used for treatment after ingesting radioactive cesium or thallium. Recommended Adult dosage typically 1 to 3 grams per day, or up to 12g/day for higher exposure. Typical treatment duration is 3 weeks.

[@That_Chemist]

amazing - It would be challenging to convince me to consume 1-3 grams of prussian blue

[@tsm688]

@@That_Chemist The ferrocyanides are quite nonreactive in general, the cyanides are extremely tightly bound. Prussian Blue in particular is extremely insoluble on top of that. Strong acids and bases can release the cyanide -- plain stomach acid isn't enough. There are records of a poor woman who attempted to commit suicide by eating heaping spoonfuls of some more properly soluble ferrocyanide salt. She went to hospital for **iron poisoning**.

[@TheDexCrafter]

That's crazy that dil. muriatic acid won't liberate HCN out of Prussian blue wow

[@petrosthegoober]

Reminds me of the mythbusters episode where they see how much damage a hot hater tank can doe if it explodes, rocketign upward and blowing the roof off a house.

[@LexYeen]

Exactly the same physics as that demo, but since nitrogen boils at such a low temperature compared to water? All you need is room temperature.

[@beinggreenandunseen3171]

“Do you have any idea of what’s lurking in your basement?”

[@luca.652]

I actually had a liquid nitrogen explosion at work recently. we use a cryo mill, where we submerge a large vial in liquid nitrogen, and then use electro magnets and an impactor rod to mill the sample. at some point during this process, the vial I was using was cracked, allowing liquid nitrogen to deep into the vial. this has happened before and has never been much of an issue, since we are mostly milling soil, if we let the sample sit for ~30 seconds, all the liquid nitrogen will evaporate. however this sample was vermiculite, which apparently absorbs and retains almost any liquid really well. I let the sample sit and put it in a centrifuge vial. the moment I put the sample on the homogenizer I heard a loud WHOOMP. vermiculite went everywhere, and I still haven't found all the shattered portions of the vials lid. I'm praying that this sample is negative because if not I got a lung full of asbestos filled vermiculite.

[@lechking941]

i do hope it is the safer end of things because ya if not get your doc on the phone for lung cancer watching. and just about any other problem asbestos causes

[@gotyouchip1179]

“If you or a loved one has had mesothelioma in the last 5 years…”

[@zombieregime]

"we submerge a large vial in liquid nitrogen, and then use electro magnets and an impactor rod to mill the sample" o.O [clicks "I would like to know more"] "we are mostly milling soil...however this sample was vermiculite" O.O [frantically clicks "I would like to know more" harder] .....I understand these words.....I just dont understand them in this order......

[@ericwilner1403]

When pondering the tale of the janitor and the hydrogen sulfide, we must always keep in mind that the information was likely relayed through at least two levels of non-chemists. The offending fumes could have been some other chemical entirely, and some admin type mangled it. That ring across the battery? I had a less severe case of that with a metal watch band and a small Ni-Cd pack, back when small Ni-Cd packs were a thing. Very ouch, but no serious damage. It's one reason I no longer wear anything conductive anywhere near my hands.

[@liam3284]

Many years ago, AA ni-cads were popular, they were also poorly desinged with a positive outer shell. A spring contact could bridge the outer shell and negative pole and would get hot enough to set fire (a stove lighter sized flame) to the battery.

[@blazingmatty123]

I've seen varying cases of the ring burn over my years working in manufacturing, it's real nasty stuff, if you're lucky, you get a relatively minor burn, not pleasant, not the end of the world, worst case you lose your finger, even if it is 'just' a small battery, some of these smaller batteries can spit out a LOT of current in a short circuit, 9v batteries are one of the worst offenders for that though as far as every day use batteries go, the pins make clipping a ring on them easily and they pack quite the zing at 1.5a short circuit (about 13.5w) though AA's can give you a fair zing too at about 6.75w, doesn't take much amperage across something like a ring to burn you, lithium ion batteries are generally your worst offenders though with a short circuit current of 50 whole angry amps, the machine shop I worked at had a strict policy of no rings near any rotary tool, be that a mill, lathe or die grinder etc, but they quickly adopted a no metal rings in the shop after a two instances of ring burn, one minor and one major involving an amputation, I'm not a ring person but in a workshop/electrical field I always recommend silicone rings for this reason

[@ESTrashfire13]

Late to the story, but it's why when I weld I only leave the tungsten rings on. Let it conduct, it's better than sweaty skin. Let it burn me, I don't even need the ring if it scars right

[@samiraperi467]

Yeah, my guess is the janitor made chloramine. Surprise chemical warfare agents are always good.

[@robertlapointe4093]

Just an addendum to the 13C labeled polyethylene story. That Chemist's suggestion that the reaction be run with unlabeled ethylene first, to ensure that everything went OK with the expensive stuff, was in fact how it was done (this was in the mid '90's). Moreover, as this was performed in a continuous solution reactor, the reactor was actually started up with unlabeled ethylene and then switched on the fly to labeled ethylene after the system had come to equilibrium. This was a small reactor, with an ethylene throughput of a little more than a gram per minute and a residence time of about 15 minutes, so it took about four hours to get a really steady equilibrium and then about 60 minutes to shoot my 100 grams of 13C ethylene (reactor pressure was about 500 psig, so there was a bit of labeled ethylene left over in the cylinder) followed by another 60 minutes to flush most of the 13C polymer (during this time, I was collecting samples every 60 seconds in tared vials). Then I went through a shut down procedure where catalyst and monomer were cut off, the reactor flushed with straight solvent for a couple of hours to remove all polymer and then another hour to cool and left with a trickle of solvent flowing. After drying the samples overnight in a vacuum oven and weighing them, there was a very smooth increase in weight of the first 60 samples, followed by another smooth decrease in weight for the last 60, which was the first objective confirmation that the experiment had gone well (and that I hadn't just wasted weeks of prep time and $38,000 of labeled monomer).

[@hailhydrazine4938]

5:27 reminds me of a story told to me by an organometallics lady. When she was doing her PhD in the late 80s, one of her fellow students were careless with safety and treated his solutions of organorhodium compounds as though they were water. His logic was apparently along the lines of "I'm wearing gloves, what could possibly go wrong". This was in the "good ol' days" so people were not thaaat bothered with his disregard for protocol and he apparently finished his PhD fairly quickly and moved on to another research institute and soon after got married. The lady who told me the story was on good terms with the guy and kept in touch apparently even to this day. A few years later, the Dr Wetterhahn incident happened (fucking horrible stuff) and obviously all the organometalics people took another look at their safety protocols (and their career path). The organometallics lady remembered that her friend was not a huge fan of safety and rang him up. He was fine...kind of. At that point he had been married for a few years and was about to start a family, but he couldnt. His sperm count was far too low and far too many of the little tadpoles displayed some form of defect. He didnt smoke or drink, no one in his family had fertility issues, and he mostly lived in places with essentially zero pollution. Everyone who knew him and even himself attributed his infertility to exposure to dodgy stuff in the lab but of course no one will ever know for sure, since there wasnt a comparison done before and after. Still, better be safe than sorry.

[@lechking941]

well sounds like he was forced to adopt.

[@stevengill1736]

Speaking of Dr Wetterhahn, there's a great article in the June C&EN about the effect her accident had on lab safety.

[@stevengill1736]

Some friends and I enjoyed the sodium - water reaction so much that we decided to scale it up. As I was a working chemist in those days (this was in 1982), I knew of a company that sold buckets of foil wrapped 2.5 pound sodium bricks for a couple hundred bucks. We bought one and, as I was living in San Francisco at the time, we chose the steep cliffs near the Cliff House restaurant and the area where Sutro Baths used to be for the experiment. The foil wrap made the metal very easy to handle, so one beautiful summer night we threw a brick into the ocean. To make a long story short, the multiple detonations and burning yellow pieces flying everywhere creating their own small explosions was quite impressive. One brick that we threw closer to the restaurant was apparently visible there, because the roar of exclamations of the diners was easily audible to us over the sounds of the surf. Later that summer on Ocean Beach we tried a smaller quantity of potassium which was quite beautiful with it's reddish tinged flame. A bit of cesium was so reactive it was gone almost before we could see it, and of course as everyone knows, lithium reacts too slowly to create intetesting pyrotechnics. The same friends and I one night lit a six inch cube of magnesium metal with a welding torch....but that's a story for another time.

[@InterFelix]

Oh my god... Different times. Casually throwing large blocks of alkalis into the sea...

[@DipanGhosh]

Maybe Chlorine and not H2S? Would make it a lot more likely.

[@deltab9768]

Ammonia plus chlorine bleach could also make hydrazine, chloramine, dichloramine, and trichloramine. To a non chemist who only knows a handful of gross smelling toxic gases, it would be easy to mistakenly call it hydrogen sulfide.

[@rangwankasantikul9223]

One of the things being taught to me during the middleschool was...glass etching. Yes, glass etching for middleschool kids. Guess what's being used for the etching? Of course, it's HF (or H2SiF6, but that's not what's being used in that class and it's not like the H2SiF6 is that much better than HF anyway). The worst part was that the teacher in that class didn't provide the students any special precautions about the acid being the HF and seemingly only treated it just like any other mineral acids. Thankfully, the class went without major incidents or resulted in any casualties, but man, this could've seriously killed me if I screwed up without knowing that the HF kills. I only learned to my horror over a decade later that HF is fatal on skin contact and was exactly the acid used in that glass etching class.

[@robertparsons558]

That's a bit like the old DIY chemistry experimenter's book I had that told you how to etch glass by asking your friendly dentist for extracted teeth and then boiling them up in sulphuric acid to produce HF vapour. As a side note I used to be in the semiconductor industry and regularly used HF - very nasty.

[@darylcheshire1618]

my nervvy friend asked me to identify a drum in the detailing business next to her tennis court. It was hydroflouric acid, or HF in water. I told her it’s nasty stuff used in detailing cars. Apparently nothing better for removing grease and tar from car parts.

[@alexwang982]

@@robertparsons558 fluoroapatite? That only works if the teeth are fluoridated

[@michael.a.covington]

I've seen some kind of glass etching kit sold in craft stores. I think it uses a mixture of salts which, when dissolved in water, produce a small amount of HF. I'm not sure.

[@pfadiva]

HF is not automatically fatal on skin contact. A large splash won't do you any good at all and could be fatal after some time but a drop or two will let you live to regret getting it on you. Don't breathe it or get it in your eyes, though.

[@darylcheshire1618]

I wanted to see what happened if sodium exploded underwater. I used a small metal container that contained a bicycle puncture repair kit. The sodium was placed into this container and held together with a g-clamp. This was put into a 4 gallon drum. The sodium exploded underwater and the drum suddenly leapt into the air - silently. It had pushed the water upward and the drum followed it. The sound of the explosion was completely muffled by the water.

[@That_Chemist]

I’m sure someone has done this on KZbin

[@SuperAngelofglory]

There are some bath additives that contain lime sulfur (calcium sulfide), which mixed with acidic solutions can release H2S gas. This method of making the gas was apparently used in a suicide cases spree in Japan in 2008. I think most of the brands using CaS were phased out since then. Oh, and apparently, reacting that bath additive with oxidants only increases the amount of H2S (which is weird, from a chemical point).

[@That_Chemist]

Calcium sulfide - yikes

[@SuperAngelofglory]

@@That_Chemist H2S - double yaikes

[@SuperAngelofglory]

@@That_Chemist also, I can't really imagine why the janitor would use bath additives

[@drrocketman7794]

@@SuperAngelofglory might've been some kid. Who knows?

[@Beregorn88]

High concentration sulfuric acid is also used as drain cleaner

[@CraftMine1000]

1:00 there are a few rules when working with electrical parts, Rule 1, one hand rule, if you don't know what voltage something has or it's a high voltage system only use one hand and keep the other on your back at all times, regardless if the circuit is powered or not Rule 2, (which applies here) rings are banned, if you can't get a ring off at least cover it with electrical tape, flesh wounds on fingers are hard to heal properly Rule 3, if you're unsure, check it again, this applies to fuses, disconnects, voltages, etc, it only requires one lapse of judgement and you're gone, Rule 4, mind your grounds, electricity can take wierd paths that you didn't think of to ground, sometimes that includes going through you Rule 5 catch-all, common sense, don't touch what you don't know,

[@sealpiercing8476]

Rule 0: if it's practical to de-energize the system before working on it, consider doing so

[@CraftMine1000]

@@sealpiercing8476 that is the gold standard yes but it's practically unachievable in a lot scenarios since you usually need power applied for the system to present the fault

[@sealpiercing8476]

@@CraftMine1000 Yes, it's often not practical, but it often is and you then you should do it. Some kinds of things almost never need to be worked on live, and if that's what you're working with you can just not shake hands with danger that day.

[@robertparsons558]

A colleague I used to work with told me a story of how when he was at university in London they had to clear out an old lab storage room. They found a box filled with mineral oil containing large ingots of sodium. A novel disposal method was devised. After dark the box was transported to one of the many bridges over the river Thames. He said the result was spectacular, loud and very bright! By the time the river police arrived all that remained were the numerous dead fish floating on the water.

[@That_Chemist]

I have seen the Thames! It must have been a sight to behold

[@radiodog9713]

20,000 POUNDS OF SODIUM IN WATER kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3-6haOcfdSpfq8

[@user-ze8pt5nd9v]

The blue dye sounds like methylene blue. It's relatively non-toxic (can cause anaemia though) putting it in food used to be a common prank for medical students to pull on each other. It can also turn your pee blue. =)

[@2fathomsdeeper]

The old BooBerry cereal used to do it when I was a kid! As for peeing blue, one of the guys in my AIT unit did a bender on Blue Hawaiians one night and was peeing blue the next day.

[@johnopalko5223]

My high school biology teacher told us about the methylene blue prank. He also warned us not to use methylene orange because, if the victim knew anything about kidneys, it might give him a heart attack.

[@michael.a.covington]

My doctor told a story of a medical school St. Patrick's Day prank that involved taking both methylene blue and phenazopyridine, which is yellow. Both are common treatments for urinary disorders, and both show up in the urine and color it. So... green!

[@alan2here]

Many sports drill in to the point that it's automatic that when you fall back the head goes hard forward, then you roll or else have to clamber back up, and that this causes those people to laugh rather than be injured.

[@randomelectronicsanddispla1765]

I finally realised that phosphine (fumigating agent we use quite often for grain silos, supplied as aluminium phosphide tablets, sweet garlic smell of death) and phosgene, the chemical weapon are two different chemicals.

[@That_Chemist]

Both are terrifying

[@randomelectronicsanddispla1765]

@@That_Chemist here, you can buy aluminium phosphide tablets (phostox/fumitoxine) at the rural shop by the kilo, or tens of kilos. All you need is to provide your driver's licence. That is what's terrifying, as some farmers don't realise how toxic it is and aren't all that cautious when using or storing it. Some even throw it in buckets of water to "get a truckload treated fast"

[@phizc]

Phosphine was the topic of an entertaining CSI episode.

[@charleslambert3368]

Do you work on Venus? (it would answer a lot of questions if you did)

[@randomelectronicsanddispla1765]

@@phizc I don't recall that one

[@EdwardTriesToScience]

sodium hydrosulfite (dithionate) (used for rust removal as iron-out) can form a bunch of fun sulfur gasses like SO2 and trace H2S and thiols with acids which the SO2 potentially could somehow react to form H2S with other stuff or perhaps he stole a bunch of chems from the stock and tried using them to clean

[@michael.a.covington]

I think you've nailed it. SO2 and H2S might smell alike to an inexperienced person. Chlorine (which would have been my first guess) doesn't smell a bit like H2S.

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

From Dewar to Done-ar.

[@sethkunert6234]

So the thing about dropping bombs into plumbing is that those systems can tend to have volatile gasses in them and the release of pressure doesn't happen. If you drop a bomb in a toilet, water or gas will shoot out of every connected hole through the plumbing before it can rupture the pipes.

[@sealpiercing8476]

Yeah it's a little more plausible if the sodium is acting as an ignition source rather than prime mover

[@sethkunert6234]

@@sealpiercing8476 even if it is all water, the initiator winds up becoming a shaped charge. A cherry bomb could create a couple of water spouts without the added oomph from methane.

[@joshuaspeer2503]

A quick story about breathing in pure ammonia. This was my second year of undergrad and I was planning on making some metal nitrides from the oxide by heating them in an NH3 atmosphere. My professor told me that around 10% of people can't smell ammonia and I should double check that I could, or else she'd make me wear a NH3 detector because it can be dangerous in high levels but most folks can smell it well before it builds up to dangerous levels. I had a very stuffy nose that day so when I tried it first cautiously I didn't smell anything. My prof suggested I let a little more NH3 out of the tank and try again, this time I had more courage so I took a large whiff and I could immediately feel my nose letting go of all the snot that was stuffing me up. I could taste a combo of mucus and ammonia run down the back of my throat. Turns out I'm not in the 10%.

[@SilverAceOfSpades]

My nose hurts just reading that

[@Relkond]

Speaking of toxicity in ‘safe to eat’ things, if you look up Sodium Chloride, you can find a LD50 for it (3000mg/kg [rat]) Anything in sufficient quantity can kill you.

[@sootikins]

Or as the toxicology people say: "the dose makes the poison."

[@londonalicante]

That's like a 100kg person eating 300g of sodium chloride, which would be an almost impossible achievement. Sailors who drank seawater went crazy and died. Neurons transmit signals by sodium channels.and I understand excessive sodium upsets the balance. It also increases blood pressure.

[@n.e.g4865]

@@londonalicante They went crazy because their cells came out being isotonic. The cells (including brain cells) would have shrunk from having too much sodium and not enough H2O in them and died. Enough brain cell death would result in craziness.

[@Kualinar]

The kid's story. The mother did the only reasonable thing. Using a lot of water. 5 minutes may have been enough, but this is a case where the concept of overdoing it don't exist. The blue eating dude... I think that it's more probable that it was pigment. Pigments are less soluble and less reactive than dies. BUT, they may also contain some heavy elements... That dumb janitor probably used chemicals that where NOT intended as cleaning agents as cleaning agents. Also, had zero knowledge in chemistry. I don't know, maybe there was some sulphuric acid in his arsenal to provide the sulphur...

[@jonored]

Sulphuric acid is fairly readily available as a drain cleaner at some hardware stores. Seems plausible with just misusing stuff sold as cleansers to me, although I don't know what the rest of the reaction would be.

[@mduckernz]

Maybe sodium sulfite? I’ve seen that used as a cleaner

[@Kualinar]

@@mduckernz Another viable option.

[@Exascale]

The Janitor Probably used an acidic drain opener such as sulfuric or hydrochloric acid in the sewage pipes that were likely aged and comprised of iron sulfides. You can get H2S from crushed 100 yo iron sewage pipe in acid just as ez as pyrite.

[@CraftMine1000]

1:30 car batteries can supply 600+ amps to the starter (that's 7.2kW), it isn't surprising that it took that little time to melt the ring

[@LexYeen]

Yeah, considering I saw a hardened steel screwdriver get a tiny _crater_ blasted out of its tip when my dad dropped it across his truck's battery contacts when I was a kid, gold might as well be _warm jello_ to a car battery short.

[@christineg8151]

Re: the base bath, one of the most common drain cleaners used to be sodium hydroxide, a strong base. Drain cleaners are used to eliminate two main sources of clogs, fat and hair. If the brush in question had natural bristles, I would expect them to dissolve fairly easily, even if the solution was relatively weak, as long as it was sitting for awhile.

[@mfbfreak]

There are a ton of stories about wedding rings or other metal jewelery causing accidents with powerful batteries. Always take them off when you're working on batteries (and other power supplies) that are powerful enough to heat up metal. A car battery is powerful enough to instantly vaporize small metal items, and to melt through a big wrench if you give it a minute or so. They are RIDICULOUSLY powerful.

[@CraftMine1000]

600+ amps powerful to be more exact

[@LesNewell]

Yes, a mechanic friend of mine accidentally shorted a battery with his gold wedding ring. The ring melted pretty much instantly and burned his finger down to the bone. He came very close to losing that finger. I also had a similar incident with a metal watch strap. The strap got hot enough to turn blue. Luckily I got it off quickly enough to only suffer mild burns. Oddly enough that was the last time I ever wore a metal watch.

[@queefyg490]

Nahhhh mixing cleaning chemicals is no joke, my favorite is when a chlorinating agent (like hypochlorite from sodium bleach) and literally any nitrogen containing molecule get mixed (urea, ammonia 😁, etc.). It forms NCl3, a super sensitive explosive and a potent irritant.

[@lennartwei9357]

The King of Random has a video where he flushes sodium down the toilet. He managed to blow it up, too :)

[@sivalley]

Iron sulphides in the poop pipes reacting with HCL can definitely generate lethal volumes of H2S

[@Photon205]

Some info about my story: The information I got about the accident was mostly from the newspaper and my chemistry teacher, who is also the vice principal. The newspaper and my teacher clearly stated, that the gas was H2S, but even the fire department wasn't 100% sure what actually caused the gas to form at my school. But they were pretty sure that it was caused by the janitor mixing cleaners. That is all I know about how the gas formed. I was also pretty sceptical about the whole thing so I asked my teacher pretty often, if he knew what caused the H2S to form but he said, that the janitor was his best guess.

[@stevengill1736]

About a decade ago there were a sad story in the news of suicides in Japan involving H2S that was a product of something mixed with cleaning products. Apparently it was well known online - when I looked up hydrogen sulfide suicides I was shocked.

[@HiltownJoe]

Aparently there have been many cases of suicide in Japan done by mixing a bath essence containing calcium polysulfides and a drain cleaner containing HCL. So something similar is my best bet.

[@jackmclane1826]

If it was H2S you'd for sure would have smelled a terrible stench of rotten eggs at some point. If you didn't, it probably was not H2S. It is much more common to have accidental chlorine release by mixing of common detergents.

[@Photon205]

@@jackmclane1826 I personally didn't smell it, but a lot of the students and teachers did.

[@splendidcolors]

The teaching assistants released chlorine in a lab class using both Dawn (degreasing dish detergent) and sodium hypochlorite bleach together to clean glassware. Except they mansplained/gaslighted me that this was OK and "if you don't like the smell of chemicals, why are you a chemistry major?" @@jackmclane1826

[@sealpiercing8476]

Well now I know what spinning band distillation is. Interesting process.

[@chanheosican6636]

Sodium is scary. Cody and Grant dumped sodium down a toilet and it exploded. Cool video.

[@kiro9291]

o7

[@Patmccalk]

One of my “favourite” things I’ve done to myself, about a decade ago I was out getting ready to hop on the snowmobile, but I had to gas it up first. Well, I grabbed the jerrycan and popped the top off, walked over to the sled and set the full can on the seat, thus resulting in it sloshing around enough to splash straight up into my eyes. Half an hour of rinsing my eyes out later and I was still in agony. Folks, don’t fuel up your eyes, it doesn’t give you better mileage

[@candiman4243]

Accidentally had a similar thing happen when I tried to grab a jerrycan to fuel my lawnmower. Moral of the story? Don't store gasoline on a shelf above your head level.

[@Patmccalk]

@@candiman4243 and/or also don’t stand with your eyes directly over the mouth of the jerrycan, lessons get learned on days like that

[@homeopathicfossil-fuels4789]

Okay worst accident I ever had was wayy back in 7th grade around christmas time, my teacher made me stand in front of the class, dousing a piece of steel wool tied to a wire in ethanol then lighting it on fire. Idea was to spin it so it would produce pyrotechnic sparks in a cool pattern. I did so. Neither the science teacher nor I, nor anyone else present in the class had considered the "range safety" of the sparky steel wool stunt and the box of steel wool was left open. A spark landed in the box of steel wool and somehow it ignited the entire thing, causing a major incendiary shitshow to occur. Teacher had to get a fire extinguisher, luckily it was the right one unlike the first story in this video. I felt like an idiot, the teacher did, everyone in the class spectatingj the stunt, even the allegedly mentally challenged kid, they all just stared at us like we were the biggest dumbasses to grace the universe. I miss my science teacher, he taught us chemistry the old school way, he even let me make gunpowder. At least I know how to avoid turning my bathroom into a gas chamber and why lighting metal on fire for shits and giggles is a bad idea.

[@carlhelm2402]

Added to bucketlist: sodium capsulated in watersoliable container (low soliability capsul)

[@samevans4834]

I feel like a KZbinr like How Ridiculous or similar would build an entire fake bathroom set, toilet, drain and all, just to flush a chunk of sodium in it. I would watch that video

[@elfakyn]

I used to have access to liquid nitrogen from our mechanical engineering lab. I liked to go to parties and do various liquid nitrogen demonstrations and tricks. Of course, I couldn't afford a proper dewar, so I bought a cheap 1.75 liter thermos and drilled some holes in the top of it. It'd last for 24 or 48 hours before fully evaporating. Whenever I went to a party I'd go to the machine shop, load up my "dewar" then hop onto the NYC subway cradling that thing like a baby. Of course, whenever the subway train got a bump or jolt, the liquid nitrogen would slosh around and vaporize, causing little jets of condensation to hiss out violently from the top. This is NYC where nobody bats an eye at the craziest things, but my setup did get a lot of stares. Big unmarked steel cylinder, with the top frosted over and random steam jets coming off of it? yeah... luckily I was never stopped by the cops. I should mention that these were... 18+ parties so the activities did involve either skin contact with the liquid nitrogen or... certain items at cryogenic temperatures. I did have proper safety precautions and training for this specific use case (yes, you can actually get that kind of training) and everyone had a blast. It was pretty popular and would always draw a crowd. Nothing bad happened but the parties did eventually ban the liquid nitrogen, so that was the end of that. Good times.

[@gotyouchip1179]

I’m trying to imagine what kinds of kinky shenanigans can be done with liquid nitrogen. Maybe I’m not imaginative enough, but I can’t think of anything. It also is probably good that I can’t think of anything.

[@davidestabrook5367]

My guess, pour some liquid nitrogen into a condom, quickly tie it off, then watch it expand.

[@jakebimrose]

I love your videos already but that video footage of the incident really took things next level

[@nive7299]

Nice thumbnail! :)

[@That_Chemist]

DOLL-E

[@NitrousFox]

About the gold ring, it’s worth mentioning that although car battery’s are only 12V, they push hundreds of amps under load (typically 600-900A) and I’m not even sure what the current would be with a short. If you clack some jumper cables together those sparks are lil chunks of copper blasting off the clamps

[@TrueMechTech]

2:00 Waterboarding saves lives

[@mastershooter64]

hey! look at that chemist getting sponsors and stuff, he's a big boy youtuber now!

[@blakena4907]

Oh, I wish we had video of that nitrogen dewar exploding. One of a few things that are hilariously violent if no one gets hurt.

[@NoahGooder]

17:12 this sounds almost like a final destination chemistry pitch

[@maddiesmenagerie8853]

10:30 it took me longer than id like to admit listening to these videos to realize that glove boxes are probably those sterile, sealed-chamber boxes with the built-in gloves or whatever that you see a lot in movies and NOT the the dashboard cabinet in the passenger side of a car. 16:40 This story is the epitome of “BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!”

[@kiro9291]

my man got a sponsorship I'm so proud

[@That_Chemist]

[@lloydevans2900]

Yep, there's a reason why the classic sodium in water demo is done with really small shavings of sodium metal. Any piece approaching 1 cubic centimetre in volume can generate enough heat to melt itself, and if that happens, an explosion is not just possible, but likely. The larger the chunk, the more likely it will explode, so a golf ball sized lump is basically guaranteed to detonate in a big way. I can easily believe that a piece that big would generate an explosion powerful enough to rip a toilet bowl to bits, and you would definitely not want to be standing anywhere near it when that happened. This would depend on how rapidly the sodium chunk came into contact with the water: If you tightly encased it in many layers of dry toilet paper, that could provide enough of a delay to allow it to be flushed down into the sewer before the reaction rate went exponential - provided the bundle wasn't too big to prevent it going around the U-bend and down the pipe. So with careful experimental design, you could make the detonation happen far enough away from you that you might not get hurt by it. However, when it did explode, it could easily ignite any flammable gases in the sewer - mostly methane with a twist of hydrogen sulfide. If there was enough gas present at the time, the size of the explosion could be magnified enough to blow the lids off any nearby manhole covers, and convert any toilets in range into instant flaming turd geysers.

[@wouldntyouliketoknow9891]

three INCH water mains. A 3 foot water main would be a major underground trunk supplying an entire portion of a city.

[@That_Chemist]

Fml

[@benruniko]

Aww you read my story? Thanks! I will send it to my dad. He will smile and probably correct my terrible memory :)

[@NebulonRanger]

6:12 This was likely well-known cyanobro iron ferricyanide, otherwise known as Prussian blue. It's also used medicinally! Good guy iron ferricyanide.

[@emberthecatgirl8796]

Funny story I’ve heard passed around the Warsaw University physics department, they apparently poured a considerable amount of LN2 into a .5L cola bottle, the old one that was extremely tough. They left it on an empty lot. The cap left a serious chip in a concrete staircase.

[@pfrstreetgang7511]

The sodium metal gets at least one person in any group in trouble. They just can't stop themselves. Junior year Air Academy High School - my lab partner and I had duty handing out supplies, and a third guy was measuring out the chems for assignments. It was basically nitric acid, a penny, and a crucible. Halfway through class, we finally notice that our third wheel is fishing around with tongs in the sodium metal jar when we weren't using any for class. We had just enough time to flee the stockroom, yell "incoming!!!!!", and hit the floor. Blew up half the stockroom because he tossed it in the rinse sink. What a mess. Apparently, he was smart enough to race out the other door thereby literally saving his skin, but it did make him miss graduation due to a 3 month suspension. 2 weeks later, this one girl was still insisting the classroom had been hit by lightening.

[@bluestonecreeper720]

I may not have chemistry storys yet but I will next semesterrrrrr (after Christmas)

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

Heeey, the clam-controlled water purification plant in Warsaw came up! It's called "Gruba Kaśka" ("Fat Kathy") and is located right in the middle of the Vistula river - quite attention-catching from the banks, even more so if you spot it while crossing a bridge. As for the clams - there's a virtual tour of the building available on youtube ("Studnia Warszawy - Wirtualny spacer po Grubej Kaśce") where the clams are clearly visible at the beginning. And yes, those are literally switches on springs, which are hot-glued to the clam's shell - McGuyver would be proud.

[@alan2here]

I cant believe I ever bothered to not have a riker beard, horrible burns seems way worse than not being able to shave.

[@tigereyemusic]

Yeah the stories about mixing cleaning chemicals reminds me of a case at an old job I used to have. Normally things got cleaned either with a regular industrial detergent in water, or for certain areas, like biohazard rooms, they got cleaned down with Virkon. With Virkon, you have to leave it time to work, and everything slowly turns pink over time from the residue it leaves behind on the surface until eventually someone breaks out the heavy duty floor scrubber to remove it. In the cleaning cupboard, there was also household bleach, purely for cleaning the toilets in the changing rooms, but it was never supposed to be used in the actual lab areas. Anyway, at one point a newbie who had a thing about germs, decided to use bleach instead of Virkon. When she got to the room that was finally empty after weeks of being cleaned near daily with Virkon, the bleach reacted with the Virkon residue on the floor and released some sort of toxic gas. Thankfully someone was around nearby and raised the alarm and got her out and to a hospital, and I think she’s fine now, but she was given office duties after that.

[@damanifesto]

I have a functioning Halon extinguisher on my boat. Very popular for decades on pleasure craft.

[@That_Chemist]

Cool!

[@WarneD1]

0:46 something similar happened to my Grandfather on my Dad’s side. He was working on his car in the driveway somehow his wedding ring shorted the across the electrical system and made the ring extremely hot, he said he was lucky cause it rained earlier that day and there was a puddle of water close by that he dunked his hand in, he said he could see steam coming off of the ring when he plunged his hand in. After that he never wore his ring while working on the car.

[@henerius3891]

I've got a little story I like to build all kinds of electronics but I've also always wanted to do chemistry. I decided to do something with electrolysis. It would be a perfect mix of electricity and chemistry. I used salt water as electrolyte so when I had to adjust the setup I just put my hand in the water as it wasn't dangerous. But one time I did that my hand felt tingly and started to kinda hurt. I think the salt had turned into sodium hydroxide so the water was basic enough to give me a mild chemical burn. And no it was not an electric shock. I was too busy worrying about the chlorine gas I forgot the other side products.

[@TheOtherSteel]

Student tosses stolen potassium into toilet, causing explosion, getting a broken leg. School bans sodium.

[@ern1353]

My mom has a chemistry story: Some time in college she was in chemistry class. The fume hoods there were in pairs, with the students backs facing each other. The person behind her somehow managed to accidentally make mustard gas. And, at that exact moment, my mom was smelling her experiment (in that safe way where you move your hand over the top of the beaker) and took a deep breath in. She turned around to see yellow gas spilling over the other person’s fume hood. The class was evacuated and she had a cough for the next week.

[@Ithirahad]

3:00 It is definitely worth testing in an isolated replica plumbing system though...

[@That_Chemist]

🗞

[@whamer100]

that explosion, although obviously destructive and definitely not what should happen, really cool to watch and one of the reasons i love chemistry. violent chaotic reactions are what i live for (although preferably on video, and not in person)

[@kaboom4679]

Funny how some of the best stories involve a highschool chemistry teacher with zero f@#&$ left to give .

[@DeuxisWasTaken]

Man, the best lab stories not directly related to stupidly dangerous chemicals are those about pressure tanks with welded or otherwise stuck pressure relief valves. The forces that are released when the tank finally ruptures are insane. At this point I've heard a lot of them and they never cease to amuse with how much damage they'll cause and how scary the accident will be. People welding these valves shut must've never heard one to even consider that idea.

[@PsRohrbaugh]

My understanding is that halon's primary purpose was to protect electronic equipment while putting out the fire - something you would care about when putting out a small fire in a server room.

[@michael.a.covington]

Right. I have a small, spray-can-sized Halon extinguisher on my electronics workbench, in case it's needed if some component shorts out and catches fire, or there's a soldering accident. I've never used it (in 30 years). What I had in mind was fires on the order of an inch in diameter, in the middle of valuable equipment. For real flames I have a CO2 extinguisher on the other side of the room -- also never used in 30 years, but replaced a couple of times due to age.

[@PsRohrbaugh]

@@michael.a.covington In my non expert opinion I'd use them exactly opposite. Start with CO2 and switch to halon only if it's insufficient. CO2 is much cheaper to refill, but not quite as effective at putting out fires. Any TV show you see putting out fires (like Mythbusters) uses CO2 as their first line for a reason.

[@RealCadde]

About the gold ring, there's a few things to note here. 1) Gold is among the most conductive elements out there. It's also not keen on oxidizing so it ensures clean good contact with whatever has the potential to conduct electricity. As such, gold will quite easily melt since it will take any available potential (voltage) at really high current (amperage) to produce a massive amount of power (watts) and it's that power passing through it that will heat it up. Since gold also has a relatively low melting point, it will happily melt before many other leads (such as copper leads) do. 2) Gold rings are not usually solid gold. First there's the "karat" which tells you how pure the ring is, with 24 karat being 99.9% pure gold, 18 karat being 75% pure. Less pure gold tends to have nickel and silver mixed in to "cheapen" the ring or the gold is just less pure because it wasn't purified so anything could be in there with the gold. Impurities in gold is what makes it spatter when melting. Pure gold doesn't spatter until you introduce an impurity or you start it boiling. (which is just introducing impurities) But also, many rings are coated in gold with the core of the ring being something much cheaper. Coated rings will melt easier due to the gold being thinner, while still highly conductive. 3) Car batteries are excellent at producing high currents. Up in the 1000 A region, meaning a 24 volt battery is capable of delivering 24 kW of power for a few seconds. That's like combining 20 high end toasters onto a short section of the ring. And yes, since the battery is capable of pushing 1000 A through its terminals and leads of thick copper, the gold ring is nothing to the circuit in question. You can use a car battery of sufficient rating and health to weld steel for a short period of time. The reason it's a short period of time is due to the low energy density of lead acid batteries. But the mere fact that you can use them as an improv welder should be reason enough to understand what happens to a gold ring when it's shorted over a car battery.

[@NicolasBana]

About the gold ring story. A car battery can supply hundreds of amps in a short pulse, what is needed by the starter to overcome the compression of the engine. Gold being a supremely good conductor and a ring being a very small cross section, it's no wonder it almost exploded in its face ! If you ever see an electrician or a mechanic with a ring of electrical tape... It's probably covering a ring they can't remove

[@sethsims7414]

You should do a tier list of US Chemical Safety Board videos.

[@tomkerruish2982]

If you multiply the pressure (1200 psi) by the volume of the dewar, along with a factor of 5/2 for the thermal and rotational degrees of freedom, you'll get the energy released by the explosion. At Caltech back in the eighties, we'd do this with two liter bottles and call them 'thermal expansion devices'. They take (very) roughly twenty minutes to detonate in air (due to the formation of an insulating layer of ice) but mere seconds in water.

[@CameronStPeter]

I'm a bench jeweler, and it is true - gold do love to "melt and splatter" under the right conditions. Especially under compressive stress, or very uneven heating.

[@catboy_official]

Loving the Fritz Haber grimace art 😂

[@NoahGooder]

13:22 the students and myself in hindsight are very amused by this

[@Valdagast]

7:10 _All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison._ Paracelsus 1538

[@hk74654]

For the anecdote about dosage making the difference between "safe" and "not safe", there is a nice German saying: "Die Dosis macht das Gift" / "(The) dosage makes the poison."

[@aqdrobert]

Chemist combined tungsten, tritium and fluorine. He had no idea WTF he created.

[@unknown-ql1fk]

At my university micro bio, gen bio, molecular bio, genetic engineering and many other labs all used Et bromide for undergrabs. The undergrad students were allowed to make gels and measure it all out pour the gels and clean the flasks.....it freaked me out a lot. They were soooooooooo messy

[@oeku3432]

Most brake cleaner is non chlorinated however they are usually still extremely flammable, despite my boss's assertions that empty aerosol cans don't need to be recycled

[@Gunbudder]

1:26 My grandpa caught three phase to the chest by leaning into some test equipment that was still powered on, and his gold cross fell out of his shirt and into the equipment. he told me he flew backwards, knocking the equipment over and smashing his head. after that, he always either took off the cross or taped it down with electrical tape. always tape up your ring! or just get a silicone one to avoid degloving. i also have a friend that tattooed their ring on because they are a chemical engineer and its not worth the risk to forget to take it off

[@BuGBurnout]

Yeah, pressure vessels are no joke. Reminded me of the mythbusters water heater: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGnMqX2CqbZ1ecU

[@coldloyalty]

Interesting story with a lot of ignorance. I was working in a metal fab shop. There was a lot of restoration work in said shop, and that typically involves degreasing metals before refinishing with acid etching solutions. We had many options for this.. however my favorite was an industrial degreaser with a deca-flura-something chemical.. mostly because it had a toothpaste smell instead of a harsh headache inducing aroma.. also.. it had incredible narcotic effect that I wasn't aware of because I usually used it outside.. Anyway now I have a couple permanent scars because a strong metal etching acid was spilt on my thigh while I TRIPPED BALLS.. luckily this is a restricted chemical to prevent abuse

[@cock_sauce8336]

A bit unrelated but the cleaner not knowing that he should not clean the bromide room reminded me of a story my networking teacher once told me. So a company he had worked with in the past used to have a huge server room that kept having a regular 3 minute shutdowns at 5 pm every day. The engineers were clueless since everything worked as intended and nothing showed signs of damage / misconfiguration. So one day they decided to be present in the server room around that time and what they witnessed was... A CLEANER PULLING THE POWER CORD OUT OF THE WALL TO CLEAN THE SPACE UNDER IT AND THEN PUTTING IT BACK IN. People really have to teach every single person that has access into a workplace... Not sure how she thought that pulling random stuff out of a wall is okay in a server room but okay...

[@jed-henrywitkowski6470]

I was working on a small engine and was wearing rubber impact resistant gloves. Well, I was using Brake Clean and it absolutely destroyed my gloves.

[@jtheninja5555]

Im a chemistry education student, and we have to go in the field and shadow under teachers for experience in the classroom before we can even become student teachers. I knew a guy who was shadowing under this chemistry teacher told me about this time where his teacher wanted him to perform a dilution of 6M HCL for a lab that was going to go on later in the day. Sadly, there was a broken fumehood that wasnt in the already very lacking school budget to get fixed, and even with lab goggles, the dilution of the acid irritated his eyes for a couple hours after the fact. Acids are scary stuff.

[@Roadiedave]

Reminds me of a kid in my HS that stole a bundle of steel wool, and a 9V battery from the shop along with some other things. He was caught when being questioned. He denied everything till the tape came off the battery that just so happened to be in the same pocket. Literally "liar liar pants on fire"

[@ForfeMac]

Chlorinated brake clean works better than nonchlorinated in my opinion, but I don't keep it in the shop for that exact reason.

[@jermainerace4156]

As a machinist I've worked with some very expensive alloys. The most expensive part I've ever messed up was more than $100K USD. At my current employer we have a huge LN2 tank trailer sitting outside and we fill ~100L dewars from it. Since the gas company owns the tanker, we have our own dewars which all have metals plates from when they were most recently refitted. The newest refit is from the early 1980s. Our company has a history during which we've absorbed many failing or defunct engineering firms, so it's likely that we inherited these ancient dewars from one of those. I often worry about them, they are supposed to vent at 50psi, but one of them has a broken gauge, and while it does seem to vent correctly, there is no simply way to know for sure what pressure the tank is under. As for the cleaning chemical that produces H2S, my best guess (and I think it's a long shot) would be some kind of alum (most commonly potash alum aka potassium-aluminum sulfate). It's not a common janitorial chemical, but it does find use in laundries, and can be occasionally found at grocery stores. It was once considered food-safe; and used to keep pickles crispy when canning (until the whole aluminum toxicity thing blew up). It is very mildly acidic, less so than most household vinegar. It is about as innocent and unintimidating as a chemical can be, so most people who know what it is would think it extremely innocuous; however, it is just barely acidic enough to react with iron, and when it does, it produces H2S. Mostly this doesn't become an issue because it would take a large concentration or hot alum to generate enough H2S to become a problem, but it someone dumped a bucket down a drain or something, and the drain wasn't fast enough, H2S might be produced in quantity. I have used alum to remove steel alloy tools (drills, taps) from aluminum or other non-iron work pieces, and you can see bubbles come off of them.

[@That_Chemist]

👀👀👀

[@tdbla98]

Y'know hearing others remind me of the dangers of home chemicals makes me wonder if I did any damage from my time at a Sam's Club for my first job. We used chlorinated cleaners/sanitizers and I was the only person in my section. So in the back where we prepped meat, we had a huge industrial fan pulling air and steam out for when we cleaned and sanitized betweens prep. We were supposed to be wearing respirators but we didn't have any, I've honestly never been in large restaurant or building where we use them since. But the amount of chlorine and other chemicals that made my skin so freaking dry and gave me issues with my nose and arms... My god that was probably not great for me being in an enclosed room spraying chlorinated cleaners all over the walls and explains my headaches and very dry skin from my time there. Sam's Club would like you to know they aren't a Walmart, but they are

[@ryanclaerhout9856]

After hearing 18:56 I can't help but imagine that's what the Dewar sounded like 😂

[@purplealice]

When I was in high school, I was standing next to my locker in the hallway. There was a water fountain on the wall near where I was standing, and someone had plugged its drain with gum. As people tried to use it, water collected in the basin of the fountain. As I stood there, something whizzed past my ear and landed in the standing water. and there was a tremendously loud *BANG*! . I was unhurt, and nobody was nearby to be hurt. I thought somebody had thrown a small firecracker into the fountain. (I was not one of the popular kids.) It turned out that someone had gotten a tiny chunk of sodium and threw that past me into the water. Of course water was pouring out of the pipe into the hallway (and the lockers near the fountain). Nobody ever found out who did it, or why, but nothing came of it either.

[@brzydka_i_bestia]

Damn it we have one of those LN2 dewers here, over 200L

[@Delzra]

the clams testing the water quality: Tom Scott has made a video about that if youre curious

[@That_Chemist]

I know! :)

[@zombieregime]

RE: car battery, gold ring. The CCA rating on car batteries stands for Cold Cranking Amps. Thats the COLD cranking amps, as in when the fluid in the flooded cells is on the less reactive end of the thermal spectrum. Its usually about 600+ amps on the low end (I usually see 800+ amps). Because the battery is expected to spin the engine against the compression of the pistons for a number of seconds possibly when its balls cold outside, it needs A LOT of juice.. 12v at 600A is north of 7kW. Yes, 7000 watts of energy. That is plenty to flash liquify many metals...... Ive had a craftsman wrench weld itself across the terminals of a car battery once. Luckily it was a pretty weak weld, but it was indeed stuck and warming up quite fast. LPT: If you are working on or around the electrical system of a car, especially any wires that say live when the car is off, DISCONNECT THE NEGATIVE TERMINAL!!! With the negative undone everything will be safe to touch everything else. Just be aware you will get a little sparky jump when you reconnect it as the capacitors in all the electronics charge. P.S. if you dont want to lose your radio presets, or have the computer run its relearn cycle, you can get/make a 9v to cigarette lighter plug adaptor. Pop it in right after disconnecting the battery, AND REMEMBER TO REMOVE IT BEFORE RECONNECTING!!! It will provide plenty of juice to keep the memory circuits alive but not enough juice to arc anything....or weld...

[@ZA-mb5di]

7:03 I forgot what I was cleaning one time but it involved hydrogen peroxide and bleach, but only in amounts that the Q Tip I was using could hold. It bubbled a bit. Glad to know what it was now

[@dovos8572]

14:00 in my middle school time they cleaned out the chemical storage in the summer holidays and they did that by filling up big bottles with fluid chemicals that shouldn't react with each other. well it wen't well for the most part until they found a bottle with a chemical that wasn't what it was labled as and it started to boil and fume. luckily it wasn't a big reaction and they could just wait until it finished reacting, but the few people in the school got out and they called the firefighters as safety measure for the case something else unexpected happened. that way the firefighters got a free chemical training call out and the people that lived in that region had something to watch.

[@ShadowKestrel]

another possibility for the blue is brilliant blue FCF. it's so nontoxic that its presence *in the bloodstream* is considered basically a non-issue, and has something like 5% gastrointestinal absorption on top of that. blue

[@puellanivis]

So, I’m in Chem 111 lab with a friend, and we’re lab buddies. And we’re doing the typical very early beginner “identify what kind of bond this has” lab, and one of them is a small granular cubic structure that is semi-transparent/white. As we’re gathering our samples, my lab mate is holding a single crystal on a glove and says, ”I think it’s sugar.” I look at him dead in the eyes, and I’m like, “omg, don’t.” And return to our work area. He comes back shortly and says, “it’s definitely not sugar!” It didn’t cause massive damage or anything, but he says it made a bit of a sore. So, after we return the assignment, so there’s no question of cheating, we show up at the chemistry area, and we’re like, “hey, could we have the MSDS for Unknown #2 from Lab #1?” I know phrasing it like this meant they really couldn’t really say no, but they did ask “why?” We played it off like he hadn’t broken Rule 0 of chemistry: don’t taste it. It was Sodium Chloride… which is probably for the best. Clearly some of the students are going to try and see what it is by taste.