I had a lot of fun in high school chemistry classes. We had a teacher who was probably insane but was a fairly intelligent old guy who wore old jackets with elbow pads and, so, was called eccentric. Best class ever was on the reactivity series and involved sodium into a petri dish of water in a fume cabinet. The little ball of sodium spun and fizzed around a bit and even caught fire. Interesting.
That apparently wasn't good enough, so our teacher decided to demonstrate issues of scale. He kitted us out with face masks and riot shields (don't know where he got those, and I'm not interested in exploring how he got them for legal reasons), picked up his jar of sodium and other bits and pieces and took us down to the teacher's car park in front of the school.
With mechanical long tongs and effusive warnings for us not to ever do this (ever ever), he dropped a much larger piece of sodium into a beaker of water. The results were one large bang, a small mushroom cloud rising into the air, the apparent disintegration of the plastic beaker and a small portion of the tarmac, a former-English teacher principal peering out the school office window and our science teacher screaming "COOL LETS DO THAT AGAIN WITH HCl!!!"
We didn't. The principal came out and had words with him about OH&S and nice new cars and so on. So we went back to the classroom with him muttering about, next time using Potassium or maybe Lithium all the way.
Issues of scale came up again and again and again that year, it's honestly a wonder none of us were killed that year. Great teacher, though. He retired the year after, but I met him at a train station once and he still has a crazy glint in his eyes.
I'm a teacher now partially due to his inspiring me. I work full time with gifted students who are much more devious than he ever was and probably much smarter than I ever was. Every day I take my life and my health/accident insurance policy in my hands.
That apparently wasn't good enough, so our teacher decided to demonstrate issues of scale. He kitted us out with face masks and riot shields (don't know where he got those, and I'm not interested in exploring how he got them for legal reasons), picked up his jar of sodium and other bits and pieces and took us down to the teacher's car park in front of the school.
With mechanical long tongs and effusive warnings for us not to ever do this (ever ever), he dropped a much larger piece of sodium into a beaker of water. The results were one large bang, a small mushroom cloud rising into the air, the apparent disintegration of the plastic beaker and a small portion of the tarmac, a former-English teacher principal peering out the school office window and our science teacher screaming "COOL LETS DO THAT AGAIN WITH HCl!!!"
We didn't. The principal came out and had words with him about OH&S and nice new cars and so on. So we went back to the classroom with him muttering about, next time using Potassium or maybe Lithium all the way.
Issues of scale came up again and again and again that year, it's honestly a wonder none of us were killed that year. Great teacher, though. He retired the year after, but I met him at a train station once and he still has a crazy glint in his eyes.
I'm a teacher now partially due to his inspiring me. I work full time with gifted students who are much more devious than he ever was and probably much smarter than I ever was. Every day I take my life and my health/accident insurance policy in my hands.