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[-] Ratio_Tile 238 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What i tell you now must never be repeated to my parents. I will deny every word, except for the latter part that resulted in me burning a hole in the driveway since they already know about that.

When I was a teen, I spilled some gas on the concrete floor of the garage while filling up the lawn mower. I thought to myself, "What's the fastest way to clean this up?" Clearly the fastest option was to burn it. This did in fact work and produced a controllable flame, but I had neglected to move the closed plastic gas can away from the puddle of gasoline. As it turns out, plastic is made of flammable petrochemicals. The outside of it immediately caught on fire.

I realized that if the gas can lost structural integrity, gas would flood the garage floor, likely setting the whole structure ablaze. So, I picked up the flaming jug of death and ran out of the garage, setting it in the middle of the asphalt driveway downwind of any important structures. I now had the task of putting out a gasoline fire. How could I do this? Obviously, the best way to put out a fire is to spray it with a hose. So I grabbed the garden hose and aimed the nozzle at the melting jug of death.

This did not work. As it turns out, gasoline floats on water, and as such spraying water on a gasoline fire simply increases its surface area. It roared like a bonfire and the plastic can rapidly collapsed. Additionally, it turns out that asphalt is mainly composed of tar, which is a flammable petrochemical.

At some point I realized I had no idea what I was doing and called the fire department. By the time a fireman arrived, all that remained of the blaze was a smoking hole in the driveway the size of a small child, which was extinguished with a handheld chemical extinguisher.

My dad, at the time, was in charge of the safety training at the local chemical plant. My attempt to extinguish the flaming jug of death made an appearance in one of his PowerPoint slides as an example of what not to do with an oil fire.

[-] Eh_I@lemmy.world 100 points 1 month ago

Well, that's one way to explain the small-child sized scorch mark.

[-] UniversalBasicJustice@quokk.au 49 points 1 month ago

Epstein victims hate this one simple trick!

...too dark? Probably too dark.

[-] StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 35 points 1 month ago

It's medium rare at most... still pink in the middle, just how Epstein liked them.

[-] UniversalBasicJustice@quokk.au 18 points 1 month ago

Honestly I bet the drum of acid was darker anyways.

[-] Ratio_Tile 21 points 1 month ago

I promise I never had a little brother.

[-] Rooskie91@discuss.online 19 points 1 month ago

Fun side hypothesis proven by this experiment: Everything is made of fossil fuels (especially if this took place in America).

[-] atomicorange@lemmy.world 168 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Early in my career I did tensile testing on adhesive coupons. I was running an experiment to simulate heating and cooling cycles on a bond. I had a nice big thermal chamber from the 1960’s, lined with heating elements (and undoubtedly asbestos), a big old dewar of liquid nitrogen, some thermocouples, and a PID controller the size of a German Shepherd.

Problem is, cold air sinks. My samples are sitting on the bottom of this huge chamber and their temperature is fluctuating wildly every time a bit of LN2 is added. The ancient PID controller cannot cope with my shitty test setup, it’s trying to turn on the damned heaters to control the temperature when I’m trying to go cold and this is a multi-hour test and I just want to go home.

But… I have a cardboard box. Nice, insulative cardboard, just the right height to get my samples off the floor of the chamber and into a zone where the temperature is more stable. I am brilliant! Cardboard box deployed, I can finally begin my thermal cycling.

I learned a few things that day:

  • thermal cycles include both hot and cold phases
  • the floor of the thermal chamber has much less temperature stability while cooling AND while heating
  • specifically the floor contains a heating element and gets ridiculously hot
  • cardboard combusts at a temperature much lower than you might expect
  • opening the door of a smoking thermal chamber to investigate allows in a rush of oxygen
  • rapid introduction of oxygen to a smoldering cardboard box leads to very large exciting pretty flames
  • fire extinguishers leave a fine dust of particles all over everything that you will be cleaning up for MONTHS
[-] luciferofastora@feddit.org 37 points 1 month ago

Brilliant writing, funny story told well, 10/10, would set my experiment on fire for.

[-] UniversalBasicJustice@quokk.au 31 points 1 month ago

Cleaning up for months

Sounds like my first internship. Huge, multi-million dollar test loop for compressor validation. Shortly after I left one day a 1/4 inch tube fitting on top of the compressor, part of the oil system, sheared off during a test. While I dont remember the oil pressure I do remember the video a coworker took of the incident.

Oil geysering all the way to the 40ft high ceiling. For 45 minutes.

I get back the next day and the whole test loop is covered in oil. Footprint-wise think two semi trailers next to each other. Oil on the floor, oil in the (water only) trench drains which they had dammed quickly, oil on thousands of feet of piping.

Let me reiterate; I was the intern. Aka, my job description now included "waste oil remediation." It took a week-ish for your boots to stop sticking as you walked and far longer than that to clean the piping.

To top things off this happened in winter and the oil viscosity reflected the cold conditions. Thus as spring and summer rolled in and the temperature increased the pipes started...dripping. Honestly this was years ago and I suspect they're still wiping oil up here and there.

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[-] FerretyFever0@fedia.io 102 points 1 month ago

4 different valuable observations, science gained a lot that day.

[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 39 points 1 month ago

Science gained a scientist that day

[-] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 50 points 1 month ago
[-] Leviathan@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

There are old chemists and there are bold chemists, but there aren't many old bold chemists.

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[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 80 points 1 month ago

Mine is from when I was 14:

I mixed calcium carbide with water inside a glass bottle. Then I closed its lid. Then I waited until I got really concentrated acetylene. What I got was a scar on my right arm, a smaller one just above my upper lip (nowadays hidden by the beard), and a big scratch on my prescription glasses — without them I'd be probably blind from my left eye.

From that I've learned some valuable things:

  1. I'm a muppet.
  2. I'm a bloody muppet.
  3. My mum was also a muppet, for letting me fuck with calcium carbide, sodium nitrate, concentrated sulphuric acid, sodium hydroxide, concentrated ammonia, gunpowder etc., since my teen years. (Guess where I got the calcium carbide from? Her brother's garage!)
  4. My dog (rest in peace, Lana; you were the greatest girl) was probably traumatised with loud noises because of me. Now thinking, Lana was also with me the time I melted lead and poured sulphur on it, and instead of getting galena I got a whiff of Hell on my face.
  5. You can tell people a different story every time they ask you about the scar, and they'll buy it. The one I just told was the true one, though.
  6. Glass containers are fragile from the inside.

Anyway, that's my "nitric acid acts upon trousers" moment.

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[-] gnu@lemmy.zip 66 points 1 month ago

I remember one time when I was a kid and had read something mentioning spark gap transmitters. I of course found a bit of wire (tie wire because that's what came to hand, not anything insulated) and a radio and was playing around with a 9v battery making little sparks by shorting it with the wire and hearing the radio crackle in response. What I then thought was that if the little battery was making a noticeable effect then a bigger battery would obviously be better.

I got one of the drill batteries and shorted that out with my bit of wire to make a better spark and proceeded to discover that resistive heating is a thing and thin tie wire connected even briefly to a high discharge battery will get very hot very quickly. I ended up with a nice blister line across my fingers and a scar for a few years showing the position I'd been holding the wire...

[-] Wren@lemmy.today 61 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I was seven.

My dad didn't give me a paintbrush so I made one by taping a chunk of styrofoam to a stick so I could paint my wooden airplane. It was oil based paint.

When my war vet father saw the styrofoam dissolving, he grabbed the can away from me, remembered the cigarette in his mouth, then shoved it back and made me put the lid on first.

And that was when I learned how to make ~~nitro glycerine~~ *napalm.

[-] bebabalula@feddit.dk 35 points 1 month ago

You didn’t make nitroglycerin. Maybe you could classify it it as a form of napalm though

[-] Wren@lemmy.today 33 points 1 month ago

NAPALM that was it, my mistake. I'll edit my post.

[-] xzinik@feddit.cl 16 points 1 month ago
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[-] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 15 points 1 month ago

Holy shit, all it takes to make napalm is a cigarette and some oil paint ??! brb

[-] Wren@lemmy.today 16 points 1 month ago

Don't forget the styrofoam!

[-] Slashme@lemmy.world 56 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Water makes explosions worse.

I had put a bunch of dry ice into a Falcon tube (50 mL screw top plastic centrifuge tube) and suddenly realised that I wasn't actually in the mood for a loud bang, so I chucked it into a perspex water bath. The bang was muted but the water spout hit the ceiling and the water bath failed, drenching my supervisor's notes.

[-] deltapi@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago

Test failed successfully.

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[-] CandyPants@lemmy.ml 55 points 1 month ago

Mmmm not the same , but similar.

My single mother was changing a headlight in our garage. Like any poor person worth her salt, my mother was using a butter knife because we didn't have proper tools. I wanted to see what would happen if i crossed the cars battery terminals with the butter knife. I decided to make it look like an accident. I "bumped" the butter knife and it locked into place across the terminals. Sparks shot from both ends when it made contact. From the center out the butter knife started glowing red from the heat. It all happened so fast, i smacked the butter knife free with my right hand. 30 years later I still have the physical scar across my middle finger, and the emotional scars of what she called me (admittedly deserved).

[-] D_C@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 month ago

My mate had a similar thing happen in his old car.
The original classic Mini
Mini
Had the battery in the boot, not in the engine bay. I was supposed to be covered over, but my mate had taken it out to charge the battery and never replaced it.

He also had a can of de-icing spray in the boot. Can you see where this is going?

One feisty bit of cornering later and all of a sudden there was a hiss and a weird chemical smell. SHIT!

After a very quick emergency stop we were -fortunately- stupid enough to investigate the boot and then wildly kick at it with our young flailing gangly legs.

The battery cover was put over the battery from then onwards.

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[-] Kraiden@piefed.social 53 points 1 month ago

My dad used to be a police officer in South Africa. He had several interesting artifacts from his time there.

One such artifact was an unmarked black cylinder with a spray nozzle. One day after school, I had managed to get locked out of one section of the house and could only get into the kitchen and my dad's office. (Houses in SA often have security gates inside locking off sections of the house.)

It was sitting in this office, waiting for someone else to get home and let me in that I absent mindedly started playing with this cylinder. I sprayed a small bit out. It made made a really cool heat haze effect in the air. Awesome, but what the fuck was this stuff? Well I'd just had a highschool science lesson on how to test an unknown gas... you waft it towards yourself, you do not sniff it directly. So I sprayed out a bit more and wafted it carefully towards my face...

Instant regret. My nose felt like I'd just done a netti pot of hot sauce. Eyes streaming, snot dripping.

Lesson 1 learned. Don't play with random cylinders of mysterious chemicals.

I found out later that it was tear gas.

Hey pop quiz: What's the worst thing you can do if you get tear gassed?

That's correct! My dumb ass ran straight for the kitchen tap. Lesson 2. DO NOT USE WATER to clean off tear gas. I will say that I knew IMMEDIATELY that I had fucked up a second time. Felt like my entire face was on fire. Baaaad times!

[-] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 49 points 1 month ago

I am no expert but this feels like a fun and useful bookmark:

https://phr.org/our-work/resources/preparing-for-protecting-against-and-treating-tear-gas-and-other-chemical-irritant-exposure-a-protesters-guide/

Something I learned / remembered from reading that:

Though tear gas was classified as a chemical weapon in 1993
and banned from use in international warfare, law enforcement
officers are still allowed to use it on civilians in the United States.

That's fun.

[-] MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 month ago

It's not a war crime if you're not at war!

Taps-head.jpg

[-] plyth@feddit.org 16 points 1 month ago

Rinse your body as soon as you get to a location with a shower.

Lesson 2. DO NOT USE WATER to clean off tear gas.

So, how to clean it off?

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[-] Davel23@fedia.io 53 points 1 month ago

I once decided to see what would happen if I connected the terminals of a 6v lantern battery with an unbent paperclip. Turns out it glows red hot and hurts like a motherfucker when you grab it in a panic to disconnect it.

[-] blueduck@piefed.social 36 points 1 month ago

My dad had a power cable that had frayed, so he cut the exposed copper and threw away the appliance but not the plug???

So anyway, I found the plug with exposed copper mess. I plugged it into the wall and he came FLYING into the room telling me to unplug it. Beautiful sparks and light show

[-] Davel23@fedia.io 31 points 1 month ago

Oh wow, that reminds me of another incident. In my early teens my dad was doing some home renovations, and had a bunch of power tools lying around. He had an electric drill with a three-pronged plug but only had an extension cable which accepted two prongs. So of course he just crammed the drill's plug into the extension cable as best it would fit. It worked, but left a good part of the prongs exposed. Upon seeing this I figured I could get the plug further in so I grabbed it and started pushing on both sides as hard as I could. Perhaps unsurprisingly this did not seat the plug any better but did cause my fingers to slip and contact the exposed prongs. This caused my entire arm to feel like it was numb and vibrating like crazy at the same time. It was such a weird sensation that I just had to grab the plug again to feel it a second time.. Reflecting upon this incident later I realized I probably could have been killed.

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I feel boring - only thing I ever had to realize that if you work with solvents with a boiling point close to body temperature and have them in a flask with a glass cork, you shouldn't hold the flask in your warm hands while waiting - because after a few minutes the glass cork flies off and you have to pay for it 😕

[-] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 41 points 1 month ago

When I was a kid I discovered that cyanoacrylate acts upon human skin. It also acts upon all the change in my parents' giant change jar.

[-] phailhaus@piefed.social 28 points 1 month ago

Cyanoacrylate was formulated specifically to bond well with human skin. Liquid stitches.

[-] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Well, kind of. The original stuff was just a castable plastic that turned out to be a really nice glue. There are formulations that were specifically for skin bonding, however.

What you can generally purchase as "superglue" (usually 100% ethyl or a blend of ethyl/methyl cyanoacrylate) is not the same thing as liquid stitches (Butyl or Octal cyanoacrylate), and only barely bonds to human skin (you can peel your fingers apart if you superglue them together, for example). The real medical-grade stuff is intense and fairly dangerous, as it can't be peeled off like people are used to and trying to remove it usually results in ripping patches off the skin.

You can sometimes get the real stuff (Dermabond is the most commonly available brand name) but it's so incredibly frequently counterfeited that buying from a reputable reseller is pretty critical if you don't want to put dirty unsanitized ethyl cyanoacrylate directly into an open wound. I've never found the real stuff on, for example, amazon.

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[-] Engywuck@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 month ago

Looks like when, as a child, I read on a bottle of bleach to avoid mixing it with acid. The first thing my dumb ass did was to look for a bottle of vinegar...

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[-] MissJinx@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I have a small concrete patio inside my house that is open so it's perfect for the pets (2 cats and 2 dogs) do poop and pee. I went traveling for 2 days and left the pets home and when I came back there was a lot of pee. I was out of cleaner and, since I'm a genius, I used BLEACH to clean the pet piss. Well, we had to evacuate because I just created a chemical weapon inside my house. Almost fainted.

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[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 month ago
[-] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 month ago

Ira Remsen¹'s Investigation of Nitric Acid, which can easily be found in several educational websites by looking up, for instance, “nitric acid acts upon trousers”.

  1. Ira Remsen (1846-1927) founded the chemistry department at Johns Hopkins and initiated the first center for chemical research in the USA.
[-] farting_gorilla@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago

I was a student in a lab, so I was tasked with making the 10% HCL bath to clean the glassware. I learned that day why you should always add acid to water, and not add water to acid. The building was evacuated.

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[-] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 22 points 1 month ago

Mine, nitrated organic compounds will act on fingers that are too close...

It all started, as a teenager, with my mates and I making black powder pipe bombs to let off on the back of a farm. With time these increased in size, and then the chemistry also stepped - to the point that we unplanted a sizable pine tree. This resulted in the local constabulary paying us a visit (for the first time). Thankfully it was a quite visit, no lights, no parents involved, just a stern watch out you could really heart yourselves. As we move on in our endeavors escalated we learnt a few things.

Timing is everything, get the timing wrong and you may need stitches at best. I think one of my mates was very lucky that day and only split the skin of a finger, it could have gone much worse.

Of cause that didn't stop us - and that lead to the cops and AOS being called on another occasion - when the AOS is involved it tends to make the local papers, and parents somehow become involved as well.

All good life lessons.

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[-] crazycraw@crazypeople.online 18 points 1 month ago

I learned some lessons from acid, not nitric, but lysergic. mostly of the diethylimide flavor.

quite sweet with sugar cubes....

huehuehue

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[-] Hello_there@fedia.io 17 points 1 month ago

Did you know that acetone and/or other common reagents from a college chemistry course can remove your fingerprints?

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[-] drsaxoncrawfish@lemmy.today 15 points 1 month ago

Warning: FAFO is not a good way to learn about hydrofluoric acid.

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this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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Science Memes

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