OT: Thermite Reaction

Simon Isaacs · 2006-03-01T21:39:15+00:00

Can't remember who it was who asked if you could still do the thermitereaction in schools, spoke to our science dept, and the answer isyes.....*but* it has to take place at least 25m away from the kids,and behind protective screens that will absorb the impact of anyexploding particles.Has upset the head of science cos he used to love the thermitereaction..... but the procedures in place now make it all butimpossible to demonstrate it.The fun police have ruined yet another part of our life.

Mar 01, 2006 22 Replies

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Ian Rawlings 20 years ago

We had a large plastic coke bottle filled with a gas (probably hydrogen) then the neck-end lit fly across our heads and pop against the back wall, that was interesting.

We also had to evacuate the lab once when some twit decided that blowing into the extraction tube of a flask containing brown Bromide gas and watching it toot out the top would be funny.. Dissolves your pleural membranes IIRC.

Then of course there was the bits of wood being fired across the room by the circular saw in woodwork, and the merriment we had with large gas cutting torches in metalwork..

So sometimes it's not surprising about the fun police cracking down!!

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Hirsty's 20 years ago

We all thought these things were

Very true but a really professional approach asesses such risks and deals with them. Otherwise you remove and sanitise the experience they should be getting. The operative statement is small scale and experience.

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Chris Naylor 20 years ago

In article , (news05 @tarcus.org.uk) muttered something along the lines of ...

No fun with chemicals but we did manage to make a fully working trebuchet out of boss and clamps (the thingys for holding things on in experiemnts) and managed to embed a marble in the whiteboard at the other end of the room... in fact the marble was still there when I went back last year for a visit!

Or the "now class, this is bromine, you have to be very careful with it and use it only in the fume cupboard" before he managed to drop a bottlefull on the floor! - cue evacuation of science block and english block above!

Lost count of the number of times we turned bunsen burners into water cannons (they work better if you remove the metal tuby bit that mixes the air in and just use the base!

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