## 12. PRANKS AND ACCIDENTS

#### Subsections

- 12. pranks and accidents - general
- 12.1 mathematics
- 12.2 burning metals
- 12.3 accidents

Index | Comments and Contributions | previous page

chemistry
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    From: Alan Meiss, ameiss@gn.ecn.purdue.edu

             Wherein the author relates the Tale of the Exploding Pen.

         Everyone who's taken high school chemistry probably has some
    entertaining stories of experiments not included in the syllabus, myself
    included. A friend and I did a great deal of spontaneous research in our
    class involving myriad flame tests and chemical combinations "Mother Nature
    never intended." I recall one time when the teacher left the room, and my
    friend dashed into the storeroom in the back to see what he could filch. He
    returned with a heaping handful of silver nitrate powder, which isn't
    exactly recommended handling procedure for this chemical. When rapid
    discomfort made him dispose of this material, the rest of us observed to
    our amazement that his entire hand had turned silver. By the end of the day
    it had turned purple. But all this, of course, is peripheral to the Tale of
    the Exploding Pen.
         One day in Chemistry class we were using calcium metal, which reacts
    with water to give off hydrogen gas and heat. This was definitely Nifty,
    and I saved several pieces. It became a source of amusement to drop it in a
    puddle of water and watch it bubble and sputter, then quickly hand it to
    someone during a quiet class to provoke an alarmed bellow (the stuff got
    pretty hot). By the afternoon I had one piece left, which I, based on
    thought processes that now entirely elude me, stored, along with some
    water, in my pen, one of those Bic Biros with the large white barrel and
    detachable endcap. It soon slipped my mind that I'd done this, and I went
    on my way to Biology class. Midway through class, we were wrapping up an
    experiment, with the teacher giving a lecture and the class taking notes. I
    was standing in the back of the room, writing down final data from our
    petri dishes of E. Coli, when my pen exploded. It was very loud, louder
    than a firecracker, and I looked up to see every face in the class staring
    at me and the remnant of my pen with great alarm. The resulting silence was
    finally broken when someone muttered "his pen exploded!" I tried to play it
    cool, giving my pen as cursory an inspection as possible, as if this were a
    frequent occurence of little concern, and returned to an extroadinarily
    studious job of note-taking. The teacher just smiled and continued the
    lecture in a bit; I guess he was used to this sort of thing.
         We had some other interesting experiences in this biology course,
    including the development of Live Chicken Bowling, and the concealment of
    chickens in people's personal belongings. In one class I remember, one of
    the kids wadded up paper towels into a foot-wide ball, and for reasons I
    don't fathom arrived at the decision to set it on fire when the teacher
    left the room. Too late it occcurred to him that a large ball of fire is
    fairly conspicuous in a classroom setting, so he stuffed it into the lab
    drawer beside his desk just before the teacher returned. The sudden earnest
    interest in the lecture he tried to demonstrate was not enough to distract
    from the smoke rising from his desk, however, and he got in a significant
    amount of trouble.
         But let me return once again to Chemistry class. In all, it was a
    fairly boring class, and we even had to pursue non- flammable
    entertainment. I programmed a Blackjack game on my pocket computer, and we
    would pass it around the class for all to play. A lively betting pool would
    sometimes start when the score got high. One day we managed to play a full
    game of Risk in the back of the room during lecture. Some of us would spend
    a half an hour at a stretch duplicating Muppet noises from Sesame Street
    episodes: "Tiiiick Tooooock BrrrrrrrRING! Yupyupyupyup". Others would
    interupt any rare quiet moments by yanking leg hairs from other guys
    wearing shorts. None of this infantilism, however, can compare to the
    mayhem related to me by one of my roommates that went on in his own high
    school chemistry class.
         He had a particularly anarchic chem class that seemed to involve an
    impressive amount of pyrotechnics. On one occassion, someone threw a
    fist-sized chunk of potassium metal in a sink full of water, which
    destroyed it (both sink and water) with a great shower of sparks. Another
    time his classmates covered an entire desktop with infamous nitrogren
    tri-iodide, an unstable compound made from ammonia and iodine that explodes
    when touched, leaving purple stains. They detonated it by throwing a paper
    airplane, blowing the top off the desk. In an act of tremendous stupidity,
    they filled an entire liter beaker with the gray incendiary material from
    sparklers, and when some fool tossed in a match, the resulting column of
    fire burned holes in both the table and ceiling. In an extra-curriculur
    adventure, they piled a mound of thermite they'd prepared in class on a
    particularly despised person's driveway. When ignited, it blasted a foot
    wide hole through the concrete and down to the dirt. Their most notable
    "achievement", however, was placing in someone's locker in a dish of water
    a large chunk of some unknown material that gives off noxious odors when
    moist. He said that the resulting nauseating stench spread through the
    entire school. One girl barfed in mid-sprint to the bathroom, and the
    school had to evacuate the building and cancel classes for the rest of the
    day. In an entire semester of Chemistry class, his only remotely
    educational experience was learning to make soap, and he had to repeat the
    subject here at Purdue, minus the pyrotechnics.

physics chemistry biology
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    From: junep@bu.edu (June Peckingham)
    I recall those days of high school

    science pranks well.  (although our chem teacher was much to smart to ever
    leave sodium of potassium where we could find it).

    -Earth Science - learning to burn skin with a magnifying
            glass.  Also learned that chalk, when heated with
            a magnifying glass, will explode.
    -Biology - Actively participated in an experiment to
            kill the mutant fish that lived in the aquarium.
            We tried everything - soda, windex, acid.  These
            guys were tough.  The other high point of bio
            was having a frog pee down my friend's arm, cool.
    -Chemistry - In a neighboring school one of the hooligans
            superglued everything in the classroom.  The
            teacher was infuriated.  When he went to sit down
            he found that his chair was also stuck in place.
            He did succeed in moving it, only by removing the
            four floor tiles it was glued to.  My high school
            chem teacher was too scary to try anything fun on.
            I did manage to light a table on fire though.
    -Physics - Our physics teacher was cool.  He let us form
            a line into the hall and use the power of the Van
            de Graph generator to shock passers by. hehe.  We
            also got to chop a large block of wood off his
            stomach to demonstrate inertia.  He taught us the
            'to every force there is an equal and opposite..'
            by throwing himself against a wall while wearing
            roller skates.

biology
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    From: "Ted Smith" <tcsmith@calweb.com>
                            The Best Teacher I Ever Had

    Mr. Whitson taught sixth-grade science.  On the first day of class, he gave
    us a lecture about a creature called the cattywampus, an ill-adapted
    nocturnal animal that was wiped out during the Ice Age.  He passed around a
    skull as he talked.  We all took notes and later had a quiz.

    When he returned my paper, I was shocked.  There was a big red X through
    each of my answers.  I had failed.  There had to be some mistake!  I had
    written down exactly what Mr. Whitson said.  Then I realized that everyone
    in the class had failed.  What had happened?

    Very simple, Mr. Whitson explained.  He had made up all that stuff about
    the cattywampus.  There had never been such an animal.  The information in
    our notes was, therefore, incorrect.  Did we expect credit for incorrect
    answers?

    Needless to say, we were outraged.  What kind of test was this?  And what
    kind of teacher?

    We should have figured it out, Mr. Whitson said.  After all, at the very
    moment he was passing around the Cattywampus skull (in truth, a cat's),
    hadn't he been telling us that no trace of the animal remained?  He had
    described its amazing night vision, the color of its fur and any number of
    other facts he couldn't have known.  He had given the animal a ridiculous
    name, and we still hadn't been suspicious.  The zeroes on our papers would
    be recorded in his grade book, he said.  And they were.

    Mr. Whitson said he hoped we would learn something from this experience.
    Teachers and textbooks are not infallible.  In fact, on one is.  He told us
    not to let our minds go to sleep, and to speak up if we ever thought he or
    the textbook was wrong.

    Every class was an adventure with Mr. Whitson.  I can still remember some
    science periods almost from beginning to end.  One day he told us that his
    Volkswagen was a living organism.  It took us two full days to put together
    a refutation he would accept.  He didn't let use off the hook until we had
    proved not only that we knew what an organism was but also that we had the
    fortitude to stand up for the truth.

    We carried our brand-new skepticism into all our classes.  This caused
    problems for the other teachers, who weren't used to being challenged.  Our
    history teacher would be lecturing about something, and then there would be
    clearings of the throat and someone would say "Cattywampus."

    If I'm ever asked to propose a solution to the crisis in our schools, it
    will be Mr. Whitson.  I haven't made any great scientific discoveries, but
    Mr. Whitson's class gave me and my classmates something just as important:
    the courage to look people in the eye and tell them they are wrong.  He
    also showed us that you can have fun doing it.

    Not everyone sees the value in this.  I once told an elementary school
    teacher about Mr. Whitson.  The teacher was appalled.  "He shouldn't have
    tricked you like that," he said.  I looked at the teacher right in the eye
    and told him he was wrong.

    (By David Owen, published in Life, October '90)

physics
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    From Jens_Kilian@bbn.hp.com

    I remember a Christmas physics lecture on acoustics where the prof first
    breathed helium to demonstrate the well know "squeaky voice" effect, then
    proceeded to do the same thing with a heavy gas (might have been the stuff
    mentioned above).  After that, he had his assistants stand him on his head
    for the stuff to drain out.  Needless to say, by that time everybody in the
    place was screaming with laughter.

chemistry
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    From: vddwesco@us.ibm.com (David Wescott)

    As a kid in 9th grade, my first real science class where we got to do
    things with bunsen burners and chemicals, instead of just watching tubes of
    beef broth rot, my teacher was demonstrating how to make and collect
    ammonia gas. Holding the flask upside down over the output tube, nothing
    happened. He said something like 'you all think that nothing has happened
    here, I take it?' and called me up. He said sniff the flask, and having
    forgotten the lesson of 'Don't lean over to sniff', I leaned over to
    sniff. Several minutes later, my eyes stopped watering, the class stopped
    laughing, and the teacher said 'Thank you for a demonstration both of the
    fact that there IS ammonia gas, and the INCORRECT way to detect it.'

    He was cool...<grin> That class was a lot of fun...

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    From: "Ben Davis" <Ben.Davis@otaotr.com>

    When I was working in a lab at Rutgers, a co-worker told me an entertaining
     story about her human anatomy instructor in med school. The instructor
     decided to test the resilience of the class by playing a little joke on
     them. The first time the class was called into the lab, they were asked to
     observe a demonstration on how to identify organs in the abdomen. The
     class gathered around their instructor & the cadaver as he began going
     through the organs and reciting their nomenclature. When he got to the
     stomach, he asks, "anyone want to see what this fellla had for lunch?" At
     this point most of the students have begun to feel a bit queasy, as many
     do upon their first run-in with a human cadaver. Needless to say, they're
     not the ones paying very close attention to what's going on. The
     instructor then proceeded to reach into the stomach of the John Doe and
     exclaim, "Hey! Tuna fish!" pulls off one of his latex gloves, scooped out
     some with his fingers and popped it into his mouth.!  Most of the students
     ran screaming/vomiting from the room. About eight of them actually stood
     there laughing at everyone else's reaction.

    How did he do it?  Prior to the class, he and his aide had prepared the
    tuna fish surprise by placing a sealed plastic lunch bag filled with John
    Doe's "lunch" into the cadaver just under the stomach. When he knew a
    majority of the class wouldn't be paying particularly close attention, he
    removed one glove, pried open the bag with his gloved hand and removed the
    tuna with his clean, freshly ungloved hand. Voila, formaldehyde-free
    vittles!

    The class was later told, "For those of you who ran out of the room, you
    will probably see much worse things in the medical field than what you saw
    today. I recommend you reconsider your majors. The other eight will most
    likely make excellent medical doctors, congratulations."

    At that point, my co-worker obviously chose to redirect her studies towards
    research.

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    From: "cleojo" <cleojo@gateway.net>

    When I was in high school, I had an awesome biology instructor, Mr. Mateka,
    or Teak as we called him. When a freshman, he went somewhere for a
    conference and left us a sub who knew nothing about biology. He was under
    the assumption that we would get at least a sub who knew something about
    science, so he gave us these really long assignments. However, the sub
    wouldn't let us out of our seats to get the books to do the assignments.
    After the three days, our teacher found that there were no books left in
    the room. There were a good 10 bookcases in that room, and we managed to
    hide all of the books. There were some in the ceiling, under the lab tables
    on the water and gas lines, underneath tables, in places that haven't been
    looked at in years. When he came back, he actually understood that we
    couldn't find the answers. 5 years later, they are still finding books.

    In the same instructors class, we had a lab ghost. This was the thing that
    we blamed when our labs wouldn't work, the computer was down, or anything
    else went wrong. Our senior year we decided to personify the ghost. Before
    spring break we hooked up the lab aprons from the ceiling, disconnected the
    lights, hooked up an oscillating fan and a strobe light, and tied water
    filled rubber gloves to all knobs and handles that would open a
    door. Monday morning after break, the janitors turned on the power at about
    6:30 am. With the strobe, the classroom from the outside was VERY
    noticeable. The janitors were afraid to enter the room. When the instructor
    finally did, he was very impressed with our skills. It was very interesting
    to see his face. The only comment he made, was that it was more appropriate
    for Halloween.  He was the person that inspired me to become a teacher.

chemistry
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    From: "Mairead O'Connor" <mko22@cam.ac.uk>

    The best chemistry lecture I ever had was in the first year of my undergrad
    course. The lecturer had some liquid oxgen in a test tube with a magnet to
    demonstrate its paramagnetism. So far, so dull.

    Then he announced that since he'd carried the liquid oxygen all the way
    upstairs, he wasn't taking the spare stuff back to stores; instead he'd do
    a few more demonstations. First, he doused a cigarettte witht he stuff,
    holding it in tongs, and lit it. The flame travelled down it in a few
    seconds. Then he did the same with a digestive biscuit, which burned
    satisfyingly for at least a minute.

    Best of all however, was his final exhibit. Behind a large safety screen,
    he filled a bowl with rice crispies, and poured on the liquid oxygen, as
    you would with milk. Then, standing a long way back, he took a very long
    stick with burning spill on the end and lit it. The flaming rice crispies
    shot up ten feet into the air, like a cascading fountain, so bright that it
    hurt our eyes. It was beautiful. But I'm very glad I was sat at the back of
    the hall and not in the front row!

chemistry
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    From: Donald Haarmann (excerpt)

     Finally, there is the case of explosives scientist who fabricated an ash
    tray from cast TNT and kept it on his office desk for the use of visitors,
    only revealing its nature after they had extinguished a cigarette in it
    with no untoward results.

mathematics physics chemistry
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    From: "Michael Morley" <Mike@morleysoft.freeserve.co.uk>

    Our chemistry teacher was demonstrating to us the alkali metals. Being year
    10 (14 year old) students we knew they were only _meant_ to use a rice
    grain sized lump. Anyway, we encouraged him to put in large lumps. At the
    end, he got fairly large lumps of each and chucked them all into the water
    at once. The potassium exploded and burning fragments melted holes in my
    pen, burnt my book and the floor. It also burned a hole about a cm across
    into a text book. After the lesson he went to boast to all the other
    chemistry teachers!!

    The same teacher was demontrating rates of reaction. He put some hydrogen
    peroxide into a conical flask and added several large drops of blood from a
    jar of chicken livers to it. He put a bung in (this was connected to a gas
    syringe). The reaction started and soon a white froth was pushing up the
    rubber tubing and into the gas syringe. then with a _very_ loud pop, the
    bung flew out and he was left covered in this white gunk. The whole class
    laughed for about 5 minutes!

    The same chemistry teacher poored ethanol on the bench and lit it. He also
    writes messages in ethanol and lights them. He attaches rubber tubing to a
    gas tap, lights it and waves it around the class without a care.

    All the chemistry teachers at our school have a competiton. They pour water
    into a coffee tin, hammer the lid on and put a bunsen under it. They try to
    make the largest dent in the ceiling. This is especially diffficult in
    biology labs where the ceiling is about 12-foot high.

    Our physics teacher told us that when he was training as a teacher, he had
    electrolyised some water. He then oppened the two taps and lit the combined
    hydrogen and oxygen - and deafened the whole class!

    Our maths teacher refuses to use the same variable mor than once in one
    lesson so we often end up using smiley-face as a variable

    At last!! A use for graph theory!! We simply calculate the maximum spanning
    tree to get from one classroom to another and thus miss most of the boring
    lessons.

chemistry
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    From: pkukla@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Peter Kukla)

      When I was in High School, one of my classmates was having a serious
    problem with people stealing his lunch.  Every day it disappeared from his
    locker (don't recall whether his lock was broken off or what.)  Complaining
    to the principal did no good, so he went to his father, a pharmacist.
      His father gave him some substance (Silver Nitrate) which didn't discolor
    the food, but which turned your skin black or purple when you came in
    contact with it.
      This guy liberally coated his food with it, and waited.  I was fortunate
    enough to see the results.
     Another classmate, who had ostensibly gone to the bathroom, returned to
    the math class, hiding his hands and face as best he could.  It didn't work
    - his dyed skin was obvious.  A cohort of his didn't even bother to return
    to class, he just fled the school for the day.

chemistry
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    From: "Scott Jäger" <syeager@destruction.dyn.ml.org>

     I remember my 10th grade highschool chem 1 class.  I was a prety
    intelligent person at the time, for my age.  One day we decided to play a
    prank on the class, scared the shit out of the whole bunch of them.  Took
    some potassium, a beaker, a very large baloon, and a lighter.  Stuck some
    water, and potassium in the baker, and placed the baloon over it.. We all
    know that will produce hydrogen, so we let the baloon off the beaker,
    closed it off, and let it be passed around the room for a while.  The
    teacher started to get curious about what we were doing (he couldn't see us
    doing this).  We finally decided to light it up, right in the middle of a
    small chapter test.  Letting the baloon go, someone stuck it with one of
    those grill lighters.  The baloon exploded into a large ball of fire, and
    an interesting noise followed.  The smartass who lit it up had no hair on
    his arms anymore, and we had no grade in chem 1.  ohwell.

chemistry
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    From: meyerar@scooby.beloit.edu (Arden Meyer)

    When I was in High School, my chemistry teacher had the privilege of
    scaring most of the freshman chem class.  He had a wooden cutting block set
    out on the bench at the front of the class, with a large butcher's knife.
    After everyone took their seats, he produced an apple, two 200 mL beakers
    containing clear fluid, an empty 500 mL beaker, and an eye dropper.  He
    proceeded to cut the apple in half, and then place the knife back in a
    locked drawer (he didn't trust us!).  With the dropper, he squirted some of
    liquid A onto one half of the apple, and we all saw it eat away at the
    apple rather quickly.  Then, after rinsing the dropper, he squirted some of
    liquid B onto the remaining half of the apple, which also ate it away.  He
    then poured liquid A and liquid B into the 500 mL beaker, and swirled the
    mixture for a few moments (about twenty seconds).  He then downed the whole
    thing in one big swallow!

    As it turned out, liquid A was hydrocloric acid, and liquid B was sodium
    hydroxide.  They were both of the same molarity, and so when mixed, they
    produced salt water.  The most interesting happening of this was the next
    year, when a young lady passed out as the teacher swallowed his drink...

    ## if you have the stupidity to try this, make sure you know alot about
    chemistry and that you get the concentrations right!!! ##

chemistry
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    From: Chris Ingram <ingramc@csdc02.orl.lmco.com>

     This prank is very similar to one you have listed, except it backfired.
    Our high school chemistry teacher used equal molarity solutions of HCl and
    NaOH, mixed them and drank them in front of class. While he did not burn
    his gullet, he did use phenothalene as the indicator. He later learned (or
    remembered) that phenolthalene is the main ingredient in many laxatives and
    paid dearly for his mistake over the next several days.

chemistry
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    From: Trish or CJ <TBC104@psuvm.psu.edu>

     When I was in high school I pulled off this particular prank.  This one
    guy in the class was always pissing me off, so I conspired to make a fool
    of him in front of the class.  The next day during chem lab, we were
    informed that we would be using concentrated sulfuric acid, which is clear.
    Anyway, during the lab, I took the beaker full of sulfuric acid (and this
    is the kind of stuff that burns through flesh) and hid it behind a desk.  I
    then filled an identical beaker full of steaming-hot, but not burning-hot
    water.  I used a wax pencil to write on the outside.  'Concentrated
    Sulfuric Acid'.  Then I walked over to this guy that was pissing me off and
    got his attention.  I took a medicine dropper, filled it with the stuff
    (which he thought was acid) and shot it all over his face.  It was hot
    water, so he thought he was burning!  He started screaming, 'Cj threw acid
    on me!!!' And promptly began thrashing and shrieking.  Everyone stared at
    me.  Then I held the beaker aloft, threw my head back and drank the whole
    thing.  The teacher nearly dropped dead on the spot.  The rest you can just
    imagine.  --CJ Calo

chemistry
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    From: gandalf@gibeah.connected.com (Gandalf the Grey)

    Ammonium tri-iodide is an extremely fun chemical.  But you have to be
    careful.  My chem prof played a really cool joke on this really annoying
    bastard in my class.  Real pop-off, and he deserved it.  You simply fix
    iodine crystals (expensive) and ammonia (roughtly as much as the crystals
    can dissolve into).  While it is liquid, it's reasonably safe.  Don't use
    more than a drop on anything, since it will explode once it's dry, and can
    be dangerous.

    However, when placed on a countertop in a very small amount, the first
    person to touch it gets quite a surprise and a stain on their skin and
    doesn't come off easily.  Hilarious actually.  I've only made it once,
    though.

chemistry
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    From: eapu160@rigel.oac.uci.edu (Mr. Wizard)

    I know that this doesn't really count as a "prank", but once in high school
    chem we were doing potassium experiments, and there were 36 students (so
    there were 37 people including the teacher).  Each student has 20 test
    tubes full of water and into each one he or she places a small amount of
    potassium (the experiment was supposed to test the production of hydrogen.)
    After the experiment, each person puts the test tubes into a central trash
    can (for those of you slow in math, that's 740 test tubes EACH ONE of which
    is pumping out hydrogen.)  Later on we were doing tests with glowing
    splints, and the teacher said "don't put a burning splint into the trash
    can" (for obvious reasons) Well, one girl thought that a glowing splint
    (not burning) would be ok.  All I can say is that the column of red flame
    was more spectacular than any movie nuclear blast!  In fact, to this day (6
    years later), there is still a very large burn mark on the ceiling of that
    classroom.

    Another one with the same teacher was another potassium mishap.  Since
    potassium cannot be stored in water, it is stored in a sort of oil.  Well,
    he took a golf-ball size chunk and held it in is hand as he cut it.  Un-
    fortunately, the oil was slippery and the chunk fell into the beaker.
    Well, what happened was that the beaker EXPLODED and impaled the teacher
    with several bits of glass (he was in hospital for a day or two) and the
    desk was strewn with a hundred or so pock-marks.

    However, one real prank was with the SAME teacher was in order to keep
    sanity and good behaviour in class, he would keep 2 squirt guns with him.
    One with water, and the other with SILVER NITRATE SOLUTION.  (this stuff
    looks just like water but it turns skin BLACK on contact) He shot about 4
    people during the year, but only one girl (the same one with the hydrogen)
    got the silver nitrate (on the FACE!!!).

    Finally, this was one I did in college.  My first year in the dorms, I
    would keep a bottle of root beer which someone would continually drink
    without my knowing.  After I couldn't stand it anymore, I went to a friend
    in the chem dept. and asked him for an acid/base indicator that turns base
    pink (I forget what the indicator was), and put a bit in my root beer
    bottle.  The plan was that human urine is somewhat base, so when the
    culprit drank my root beer, he began to pee pink.  Needless to say, about
    12 hours later, this guy thought he was gonna die!

chemistry
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    From: daudo@bcars201.bnr.ca (Dau Do)

    Yeah, these stories remind me about my science teacher.  He's used to wear
    a prescripted sunglass so that no one knew that he's sleeping while
    students were writing test.  Anyway, after one of the experiments that used
    acids, one guy in my class pour the acid on his desk.  He didn't know and
    took off his glass put on the wet spot.  When he put it on again, his skin
    burned left a red circular around his eyes ...

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    From: lister@dbreath.uucp (Lister)

            Well I am a Medical Technologist, and through the years in the
    field we have pulled some good jokes. One of the funny ones I can remember
    is a day when I was working in Hematology. One of the other techs, that was
    working in Chemistry, was this real whining hypochondriac. Well he came
    over to me telling me that he felt really sick and was wondering if I would
    run A CBC and Differential on him. So I drew his blood and labeled it and
    it to hematology and ran it.. It was normal as normal could be, but I
    decided to have a bit of fun. Earlier in the day a known CLL patient had
    been in and gave some blood, so I took one of the extra tubes, poured it
    into a new tube and labeled it with this techs info (making sure to make a
    mark as to not confuse the real sample up). Well I ran the CLL pt. blood
    and made a smear, then I went over to him and said "you had better take a
    look at this". He came over and looked at the results and then looked at
    the smear, and went a bit pale and said that I must have mixed it up, with
    somebody else. So I gave him the falsely labeled tube and he ran it himself
    getting the same results. You should have seen his face I thought he was
    gonna Die right there! Anyway I let him suffer for about 2 min. or so then
    gave him the real results and from the look on his face I though I was
    gonna die!

chemistry
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    From: <NEMCC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
      What follows is not an invented joke, but a true story, although I may
    have embellished it a little over many years of telling. "Sister Karen" was
    a nun and a Chemistry teacher who had come to work on her Master's degree
    with my now retired colleague Prof Herbert Meislich , who happens to be
    Jewish. Her first task was to monobrominate a ketone. She added her Br2,
    and started the stirrer as instructed....nothing happened ..... STILL no
    decolorisation...... after some time she is getting worried, and asks
    another student, who told her - "See that man over there - that's Prof
    McKelvie, ask him" A slightly out of breath nun comes up to me - "Prof
    McKelvie? My reaction won't work !" My evil mind was thinking WHICH of her
    reactions was not working, but that's another story. ) Anyway, I could have
    told her that bromination is dependent on making the enol, and this is
    promoted ny acid, so that the HBr produced will aid enolisation and all
    will be well. BUT - that morning I'd found on the floor a Star of David
    that had fallen off some Jewish girl's neck, and I'd been looking for the
    owner... INSPIRATION! - the problem is that you've had the wrong
    theoretical training ! Just a moment ....I tied the Star of David around
    her apparatus, added a few drops of hydrochloric acid just to help things
    along, and announced that NOW it would work in five minutes ! It took four
    minutes and 50 seconds by my watch. "SEE?!" She had the brains and a good
    Irish sense of humour to realise she was being "had", and I explained that
    it was her Organic Chemistry that was being deficient, not theology......

    (Aftermath - two Jewish girls came down from upstairs and wanted to borrow
    the gold chain so that THEIR reactions would work better........)
     Neil McKelvie

chemistry
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    From: <U58563@uicvm.uic.edu>

     "Back when I was taking Chemistry 101, my instructor did a little
    demonstration" [this is the proper start for this Urban Legend]

    "He pointed to a large beaker on the table full of yellow liquid. He said:
    The first thing a chemist must learn is not to be disgusted by anything.
    This is a beaker of horse urine. The simplest way to determine if the horse
    is diabetic (dipping his finger in the beaker) has always been to simply
    taste for sugar! (licking his finger!)"

    "Is there anyone here willing to demonstrate?" and a big guy from a
    fraternity came up with a grin on his face to taste the "urine", knowing it
    was a gag. He dipped his finger in the "urine" and licked it dry --- and
    from the expression on his face, it really was urine!

    "The second thing a chemist must learn is to be observant! (Holding up his
    hand, the professor demonstrates.) I dipped the _other_ finger!!!"

chemistry
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    From: Terry Simonds <fsimonds@icanect.net>

     When in high school, a chemistry professor was giving us a lecture on
    qualitative analysis of a substance. He mentioned color, consistency,
    weight, taste, etc., admonishing us to exercise our powers of observation
    above all.  He pulled a small beaker of yellowish liquid from under the
    bench and began to call out its characteristics.

    "This is a sample of some urine from my goat (yes, he had a pet
    goat...). If you will notice, it is a liquid, somewhat yellowish in color,
    but translucent." He then thrust his hand down into the beaker, rapidly
    withdrawing it and sticking a finger in his mouth, ostensibly tasting the
    liquid.

    We gasped; one started retching. He then explained. "I mentioned
    'observation,' ladies and gentlemen. If you had been oberving closely, you
    would have seen me insert my index finger in the urine and then lick my
    middle finger."

chemistry
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    From: wa4qal@vnet.ibm.com (Dave)

     In my freshman chemistry class (many years ago), the first day was
    allocated to a talk about chemistry (what it is, why it's important, how it
    affects our lives, blah, blah, blah). To illustrate this talk, Doc carried
    in two beakers filled with clear liquids. As he progressed through the
    talk, he would ocassionally pick up one of the beakers and swirl it (Thus
    confirming that it really was filled with a liquid). Toward the end of the
    talk, he would pick up both beakers and swirl them. Next, he would start
    pouring the liquids from one beaker into the other repeatedly (Thus really
    proving that they contained liquids). Finally, he would walk around the
    podium, while still swirling the beaker containing both sets of contents,
    and stop in front of some glazed-eyed student. As he finished his lecture
    with the statement 'This is why chemistry is important to you.', he would
    slosh the beaker toward the student, who never failed to dive for cover. Of
    course, the chemicals had reacted and formed a gelatin which stuck to the
    bottom of the beaker. Therefore nothing came out.

    Well, at least, that's the way it was supposed to work. The next year, one
    of the graduate students intercepted Doc on the way to the class, and
    switched beakers with him, replacing one of the chemicals with water. I'm
    not sure who was more surprised that year, the student who ended up with a
    lap full of chemicals, or Doc.

    P.S. He should have known something was up, what with all of the graduate
    students clustered outside of the classroom door...

    P.P.S. I actually witnessed the 'dry' version of the trick, but I wasn't
    lucky enough to have witnessed the 'wet' version, although I did hear about
    it from several (many) credible witnesses.

chemistry
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    From: Darren Schilberg <dschilberg@pobox.com>
      My dad told me this one and I absolutely MUST see someone try it again.
    His Chem professor was showing the awesome powers of liquid nitrogen (not
    to be attempted at home) where a banana is used to hammer in a nail and a
    balloon shatters when hit with a frozen rose. However, the best prank of
    all with liquid nitrogen has to be this one.
      Before the prank is pulled (or before the class fills up), a Vienna
    sausage is placed in the finger of a rubber glove and set on the table.
    Then a bowl of liquid nitrogen is obtained. Now when the students file in
    they will think everything is typical.
       After the balloon and banana trick with the liquid nitrogen the teacher
    puts his hand into the rubber glove and tries to remember which one he
    placed the Vienna sausage in. Next he dips THAT finger in the liquid
    nitrogen, grabs a hammer, and smashed the frozen Vienna sausage. This will
    make it look as if real meat is flying across the room.
       My dad said that several girls in the class passed out after this prank,
    so make sure the students are situated near the floor to prevent any
    injuries. Hope you enjoy the prank.

biology
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    From: andrewr@wormald.com.au (Andrew Rodgers)

     This is a practical joke I played on a Biology Teacher.

    When dissecting frogs, toads, mice or rats, cut out the tongue of the
    animal and discard. Next, cut out the liver (or kidney) and shove it in the
    animals mouth. After you have covered your tracks, and included the rest of
    the class in the little joke, stick your hand up and ask the teacher why
    the animals tongue is so swollen. Sit back, relax, and have a bit of a
    giggle at the explanations.

chemistry
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    From: "Raleigh C. Perry" <rperry@mindspring.com> When in a high school
    chemistry class in the early 60's I had the joke of laboratory assistant.
    After a few weeks on the job, it was evident that I had a firm appreciation
    of chemistry and that there was much fun latent in the chemicals over which
    I had control.

    The instructor was bright and well prepared.  However, she had never en-
    countered such as my partner and me.  Each Friday on cleaning up the lab we
    would take the drain cock out of the trap on the teacher's sink draining
    all of the water out.  On Monday, refitting the lab for the experiments for
    the week, we would place about 1/2 a teaspoon of metal sodium taken from
    the kerosene tank in the chemical room and put it into the sink after we
    had put the drain cock back in place.  When she turned on the water,
    another old lead pipe had to be replaced.  She never figured out what was
    happening.

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    From: mini-air <marca@wilson.harvard.edu> 1997-01-08 Food for Thought:
    Elegant Gooeyness

    Investigator Laura Fuller writes: I am a high school senior. Here are the
    results of a three year mathematics experiment. Once each year I take my
    math homework, wrap it plastic, and scrunch the whole thing up and put it
    in into a cup of chocolate pudding. I take the cup of pudding to math
    class, and when the teacher asks for our homework I hand her the cup and
    say, "The proof is in the pudding." Three different teachers in three
    years. It gets 'em every time.

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    From: "Teal, Mark" <mteal@ems.jsc.nasa.gov>
     At my high school, all of the science classes were held in a separate
    building.  The architects had probably dealt with students like us before.
    My Physics teacher junior year was very knowledgeable, but very
    unobservant.  At the beginning of the semester, we took advantage of this
    by playing paper football (folding a piece of notebook paper into a
    triangle and flicking it between your opponents fingers used as "goal
    posts") during his lectures.  So many people were doing this that by
    midterms we had to have a superbowl.  We started feeling ignored and
    decided to pull a prank.  We were normal kids and craved attention, even
    the negative attention that would be attracted by playing a prank on
    Mr. 'S'.  It started off very simple and safe, as these things usually do.
    The plan was just to slip a book underneath the teacher's desk on the side
    facing us and see if he would notice.  Sitting in the front row, I was a
    collaborator.  When the teacher stepped into the storeroom I took my
    partner's fairly thick physics book (we as students weren't using them
    anyway) and slipped it under the edge of the table while my partner exerted
    a considerable amount of effort tilting the table.  These were all-purpose
    desks used for Chemistry, Biology and Physics and their wooden sides went
    all the way to the floor.  Upon Mr. S's return, he set his ever-present
    coffee cup down and continued the lecture, of course not noticing he now
    had the complete attention of the whole class.  He also didn't notice the
    tilted table.  No papers moved and his cup didn't slide or spill.  Being
    good Physics students, we determined the desk did not have enough tilt.
    Upon Mr. S's next departure from to the storeroom (for more coffee?), we
    tried to slip another book on top of the first one under the side of the
    table.  I, again, was the collaborator in charge of placement, but this
    time it took the entire front row to tilt the table enough, and I had to
    jam the book into place.  After placement, the table looked very distorted,
    and there was an unspoken thought to use a smaller book.  Too late, the
    lookout was waving.  Quickly resuming our seats, Mr. S again set his cup
    down and continued the lecture.  His only clue that there was something
    wrong was the scraping of his coffee cup sliding down the all-purpose
    surface.  He managed to catch the cup as it cleared the edge not spilling a
    drop.  He first inspected the underside of the cup (looking for what?
    legs?  rocket engines?) and then brushed the desk with his hand.  Finding
    nothing, he stepped back and squinted at the desk, but from that angle the
    table still looked normal.  All this time there is dead silence from us
    students.  We still had a shot at undoing it all during his next coffee
    break if he didn't figure it out.  One giggle would give it away.
    Unprompted, Mr. S walked around to the side of the table and again
    squinted.  The jig was up.  The books were in plain view so he pointed and
    said, "Get those books out of there!"  All of us collaborators got up as
    the others laughed, and pushed against the desk, but the books were wedged
    in there good.  Mr. S call "Maz" down from the back of the room.  Maz was
    the only football player in the class.  He put his back against the table
    and with us pushing, we tilted the table far enough to remove the books.
    There was a great amount of creaking and groaning from the old table and as
    I removed the books, there was a loud "nnnnnnnnnnnnSNAP".  All of us
    students immediately knew that a pipe supplying all of the faucets with gas
    had sheared, but Mr. S waited for the "shshshshshshshsh" and said, "Do you
    hear that?"  We didn't wait for permission and cleared out of the room
    while Mr. S investigated the source of the hissing.  Outside, we got what
    we thought would be a non-lethal distance, but not safe distance from the
    science building because we wanted a good view when it exploded.  It never
    did and we were very disappointed.

physics
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    From: "PINCKNEY, GREG" <GPINCKNEY@fusn.com>

I remember this one too, except a piece of white chalk was inserted into the middle of a raw hotdog, which was then placed into the index finger of a rubber glove. After dipping the gloved "finger" into the liquid nitrogen (and commenting on how this demo could only be performed once), the instructor then proceeded to break the finger off at the base with a sickening "SNAP!", revealing the white "bone" in the middle of the severed finger, and noting how remarkable it was that no pain was actually felt. Quite an eye opener, I must say!

From: James A. Carr (jac@ibms48.scri.fsu)

only know the version where you smash the finger with a hammer and shatter it. The chalk is a nice touch. Maybe there is a way to combine the two ...

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    From: srt@aero.ARPA (Scott R. Turner)

                                   CAMPUS PRANKS

    * A friend of mine at U of Chicago once calculated the resonant frequency
    of his dorm's stairwells, bought a test record with that tone on it and
    played it into the stairwells from a number of stereos.  Apparently had the
    entire building shaking visibly before they got scared enough to turn it
    off.

    * I had a friend who lived in a room next to the study lounge.  The night
    before finals, I invited him up to my room and then phoned his room,
    letting the phone ring until the angry mob in the study lounge broke down
    the door and ripped the phone off the wall.

    * Ran an imaginary student for a student government position.  He was named
    after a dog.  He didn't actually make the ballot because his false ID was
    discovered by the administration, but he still won on write-in votes.

    * I once learned the day before that a professor would be late to one of
    his classes the next day.  I made up a "pop quiz" that was incredibly hard,
    and then showed up and handed it out to the class, telling them that I was
    a grad student the prof had sent to proctor.

    * A friend and I put on surgical greens, masks, booties and so on, and then
    splashed red food coloring on ourselves.  Then we burst into the medical
    library, arguing loudly, and go over to the reference copy of Gray's
    Anatomy.  I leaf through it, peer at a picture, and point and say
    triumphantly "See, I *told* you it was on the left side.  What are you,
    dyslexic?"  My friend looks abashed, shrugs, and we walk out.

    * One that I never got a chance to do: Wait until someone brings a cute
    little puppy on to campus.  Then, later that day, rush onto the dorm floor
    with the puppy wrapped in a bloodstained blanket.  Explain to everyone that
    the dog was hit by a car and it has a large sliver of glass in its side.
    You don't think it will live long enough to get it to a vet, so you're
    going to pull the sliver yourself and try and stop the bleeding.  Go into
    your room (with the pet owner) and close the door.  Play a previously
    prepared tape of a dog whining and barking in pain, and say things like
    "Jesus Christ!  Hold it still!  Oh, shit, I'm going to be sick.  What the
    hell is *that*?"  and so on.  (I couldn't find the sound effect on the day
    the puppy was there.)

chemistry
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    From: Mark McDonald <mcdonald@rsc.anu.edu.au>
     Here's a stunt that didn't quite work: I rigged up some dry ice to get
    dumped in the toilet bowls in the student residences, so that the water
    will smoke and bubble when someone lifts the toilet seat cover. I planned
    it for Bush Week, when a 99% of the students will be coming home from their
    drinking sprees. Unfortunately, they were too drunk for the prank to have
    the right impact (no one noticed).

chemistry
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    From: PsionicZergling@aol.com
                               More uses for dry ice For dry ice, you can fill
    a bucket with water and dump a whole comtainer of dish soap in it.....  add
    the dry ice in and watch the foam!a small amount of dry ice is enough to
    fill 1/2 a phone booth(i tried it!)

physics
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    From: Justin Masters <jmasters@pcocd2.intel.com>

    I had moved from Utah to California between my sophomore and junior years.
    Before leaving Utah, a teacher hosted a physics "demo" to entice students
    to take the class the next year.  One of the experiments involved a Van de
    Graaf generator.

    I remembered that experiment and warnings made during it, when our physics
    teacher left the room 2 years later, and the students took to playing with
    another such device in our own room.  I said that I would show them how it
    was done.  I pulled off my metal frame glasses, stood on a wooden chair and
    placed my hands on the bulbous top.  A fellow student started it up, and
    before long my hair stood out, making me look like a porcupine.

    Well, it started with a threat to not turn the machine off.  I had been
    told that you could get a big shock by pulling your hands off the device,
    and so I pleaded with the other students to turn it off before the teacher
    got back.

    That wasn't good enough.  Someone grabbed a big metal wand, used normally
    to discharge the static, and tried insulating themselves.  Why?  I don't
    know.  Anyway, it didn't work.  They started poking me with the wand,
    causing bolts of electricity to fly between the wand and me.

    They walked behind me.  Zap, Zap, Zap.  They hit different parts of my head
    and back.

    Then they stooped to a lower level.  They aimed for a spot just below the
    waist, between my legs.  You men know about this... :-)

    I was getting pretty desperate, and still kept my hands firmly planted on
    the bulb at the top.  I must have looked like a wrigglying python to this
    fellow student's snake charming "wand".

    He crept closer, trying to shock me "down there".  I was getting pretty
    frantic, and finally reached out with one hand to swipe at his head....

    ....and a huge spark launched from my finger and struck him in the
    forehead.  He didn't like that!

    Years later, at a state fair, a young kid was touching a gizmo that had
    little "plasma lightning" strikes reach out from a high voltage core out to
    the glass, where people would attract the bolts with their fingers.

    Apparently, this kid found that he could shock others, and started doing
    so.  It was annoying, and probably something relating to the above incident
    had to be resolved.  I reached out and pointed to his ear.  A bolt lept
    out.  He, for some reason, didn't want to let go of the device he was
    holding on to, and I continued to point to his ears.  I would leave, and
    he'd resume shocking others, so I'd get close and give him a quick zap.  He
    didn't understand how I could shock him, while I wasn't touching that
    globe.  I dunno.... :-) Maybe *I* was the ground path???

chemistry
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    From: Eric Lucas <ealucas@ix.netcom.com>
                          FOOLISH HABIT OF SMELLING CHEMICALS

    Perhaps foolishly, I've smelled quite a few compounds in my years in the
    lab.  I just happen to enjoy smells of all kinds.  The oddest was a methoxy
    cyclobutannulated aromatic compound that smelled exactly like cardboard.
    Or, more precisely, the inside of a dusty, musty cardboard box.  Complete
    with that dry feeling in the back of the nose.  Then there was the
    substituted vinylcyclopropyl iodide that smelled exactly like artificial
    watermelon flavoring.  Then there's the time in high school that I found a
    bottle of Br2 in a prep room. (I think you probably see where this is
    going.)  I thought, "Ooh, cool red vapors.  That must smell really good."
    My only experience smelling halongens to that point was I2, which, to my
    thinking, actually did smell purple.  So I thought that red bromine vapors
    would smell, well, red...whatever that meant.  Anyway, I got a pretty good
    lungful.  Breathing returned to normal several hours later.  Mr. Chiudioni
    didn't even bat an eyelash.  This followed fairly closely on the heels of
    my ill-fated attempt to make nitroglycerine (I found glycerine, I found
    nitric acid, and I found sulfuric acid.  Put 2 and 2 and 2 together.  Got a
    huge yellow nitric acid stain on the 12' high ceiling.)  To this day, I
    still haven't learned my lesson--still smell nearly everything, unless I
    have a notion that it might be not-so-good for me.

    Barry Sharpless used to publicly claim to have smelled every single
    compound he's ever made, and also claims to have tasted a large fraction of
    them.  He said that the oddest smell he ever experienced was the compound
    (I forget what it was) that smelled exactly like a blow to the back of the
    head.  Or maybe that was the floor rushing up at him that made it resemble
    a blow to the back of the head.

    The lesson is clear.  Unless you are damn sure you know what you're doing
    (a Ph.D. and about 20 total years in chemistry labs of one kind or another
    is barely enough in my case, I'm afraid) DO NOT smell things willy nilly.
    I know very well I've been lucky.  It just ain't worth it.  Unless, like
    me, you feel that, because you are a chemist, you will inevitably die of
    liver cancer some day.

physics
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    From: Karl
     Disclaimer: I didn't write this, I'm just reposting it.
    --------------------------------------------------------

    My high-school physics teacher was a real ass - so my class felt a moral
    obligation to do whatever it could to make his life "more interesting"....

    We did the usual things to his car (blocks, siphoned the gas, reported it
    stolen while he was out drving it, etc.).  But one of our best was a
    pratical application of the optics lessons...

    Our class was usually the first one of the day - and our classroom had a
    huge bank of windows along the eastern wall.  Our teacher was also very
    precise - he used to always stack papers, especially tests, at one
    particular spot on his lab bench at the front of the class.

    We had a test coming up on day, so the afternoon before, a group of us
    asked if we could use the classroom for a group study session.  What
    teacher in their right mind would turn down students who WANTED to study?
    Of course, we didn't study - we rigged a series of mirrors to bounce the
    sunlight (remember those windows?) onto a parabolic mirror that was exactly
    focused onto the spot the teacher used to stack his papers on.

    Next day, teacher arrives, places test papers on desk an starts to lecture
    us about the test process, etc.  He'd been nattering for about 30 seconds
    when the whole stack of tests burst into flames and tripped the lab's
    alarms.

    Funniest part, the twerp never realized what we'd done -- he was sure it
    was a case of spontaneous combustion....

    Written by: Bob Tremonti

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    From: clarence edward farrar <efarrar@startext.net>

     Before a chemistry demonstration, in my high school chemistry class, a
    student (not me) connected the gas outlet and water outlet with a section
    rubber hose and turned both on.  After a few seconds he turned both outlets
    off and waited.  Our teacher was very upset when he turned on the gas
    outlet to the Bunsen burner and got only water.

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    From: leipzig@qgpc.com.qa

    I am a petroleum geologist and went to college at the University of
    Wisconsin. The cadre of geology grad students and post-docs used to all go
    to the Student Union "GastHaus" to decompress after a particularly nasty
    week of TA'ing and RA'ing, exams, et al. We'd all take turns buying
    pitchers of beer, so one could down quite a few beers quite cheaply.

    Although, not as cheaply as some others.

    One character, who shall remain properly nameless, was a "beer
    scrounge". He'd show up, drink our beer, but never buy a round when his
    time rolled around.

    Well, in Optical Petrology class, there's this little test to distinguish
    between low-magnesium and high-magnesium clacite, dolomite and ankerite
    (typical carbonate minerals); and this was to stain the polished and etched
    thin section with an organic dye called Alizarian Red. Well, AR is
    odorless, colorless and tasteless. It will also color a person's urine
    blood red.

    So...

    Properly nameless showed up one evening and proceeded to drink up a fair
    share of beer. Whilst he was in the head, we spiked his beer with AR. He
    came back and drank down a rather generous portion of beer, not knowing why
    we weren't complaing about his chintziness.  Well, after 6 or so more
    beers, nameless wanders off to answer nature's call yet again. He was
    semi-lit up and having just a LARGE time, laughing and joking all the way.

    When nameless returned to our table, he was as white as a fish-belly, eyes
    as big as dinner plates and he was mumbling something about "I'm gonna
    die...I'm gonna die..."

    We did tell him 2 days later that his beer was spiked.

chemistry
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    From: "TDOWLING"<tdowling@lsc.org>
     The best prank I ever played on my chem teacher was phony mercury.  I had
    noticed in a grocery store that there were small silvery bead-like cake
    decorations.  They came in several mesh sizes and looked very much like
    mercury droplets.  I went back to the store without my mom and bought a
    container of each size.  By the time I was in chemistry class, the '70's,
    mercury was already recognized as dangerous.  Only the teacher could use it
    and spills were a serious incident.  By the way, I understand the
    confections are were made with an incredibly thin layer of actual silver
    leaf over the sugar pill core.

    Anyhow, I waited until a test day to scatter the cake decorations all over
    the instructor's table and sink.  He took one look and evacuated the
    lab/classroom.  The tests were inside, locked in the prep room as usual.
    With all the confusion it was not until three fourths of the period was
    over that the instructor touched one of the phony droplets with a lab
    spatula and discovered it was solid.  I had bought an extra day to study
    with this little trick.

chemistry
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    From: AWJimC@aol.com (Jim Cummins )

     During a final exam in inorganic chem lab at Columbia, maybe forty years
    ago, we were all handed a dry powder and told we had three hours to
    determine what was in it. We knew how to do it, too. All except for one
    poor guy, the best student in the class, whose sample had become a
    carbonized bubbling mess that stank up the whole rest of the room.  The
    instructors hung around the fringe of the room barely hiding their glee.
    They let the poor dupe agonize for nearly an hour, as he watched his
    attempts to ace the course turn to goo before his eyes, before they
    revealed that his sample had been an ounce of Betty Crocker Fudge Brownie
    Baking Mix.  They told him later that they would have excused him entirely
    from the final exam, but that they just could not resist the opportunity.

       Note for non-americans: Betty Crocker is an imaginary woman in an apron,
                       the symbol of a huge food-products chain.

physics
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                           SHAVING CREAM IN LIQUID NITROGEN

     From: Smokey Joe (stdddm12@shsu.edu)

    Get cans of shaving cream and place them in liquid nitrogen until
    frozen. Take them out and peel off the can, leaving the solid white mass
    inside. Throw x number of these white masses into the cab of someone's
    truck. When the temperature rises, they should expand(I've never gotten to
    try it, myself).

    From: Tragic Comic <vyperhunt@hotmail.com>

     In fact, the frozen shaving cream block effectively seals the aersol in as
    well, so as it thaws, the aersol expands along with the cream.  two to
    three blocks can completely fill a car interior.

    From: Mike Painter (mpainter@inreach.com)

    My guess would be that they would thaw out and leave a puddle on the seat.
    (See Tragic Comic's remark above for a denial)

    Now if you put one in a footlocker so that closing the lid pushes the
    button you get the proper result.  What is nice about this is that after
    everything clears up there is almost nothing left in the box but a few thin
    white lines.

    From: Richard Filmer <rfilmer@rocketmail.com>

    Regarding the shaving cream prank, I also believe it will fail. The tin
    casing of the can will become brittle long before the high-pressure inert
    gas will freeze, thus shooting shards of cold metal into your face.

    From: Victor Bajanov <victor@bajanov.dropbear.id.au>

    Although I've never tried this, tin has another allotrope: a white
    powder. It changes into this form at about -40 degrees Celsius (-40
    Farenheit as well). Nitrogen boils at about -70 C (-94 F), so liquid
    nitrogen would be below this temperature. So yes, the tin casing of the
    can, if indeed the can is made of tin, would turn to powder long before the
    pressurised gas froze.

    From: "Ironclad Taco" <scones@fish.co.uk>

    I didn't think that cans were made out of tin anymore. I thought the
    preffered metal was aluminium, which, to my knowledge (absoloutly
    miniscule) does not turn brittle like tin.

    From: IaanBurke@aol.com

    You really need to look at how an aerosol can works to see why this
    wouldn't! It's gonna defrost from the outside and just leave a little
    puddle, you need to force the liquid through a narrow nozzel to get the
    expnding aerosol effect.

physics
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    From: Jim Carr (jac@ibms48.scri.fsu.edu)

    My favorite was when one professor put another inside a Faraday cage at
    very high voltage when he was allegedly there just to help be sure the demo
    was done correctly, using a volunteer from the other prof's class.  Instead
    he said "Hey, he's been telling you all this stuff is true, shouldn't he be
    the one inside?"  ;-) I think the class was hoping he would be killed....

physics
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    From: Richard Herring (rnh@gmrc.gecm.com)
    I recall a practical

    demonstration of induction. Each student was issued an iron-cored inductor
    fitted with a pair of 4mm sockets, a 1.5 volt dry cell, and two pieces of
    insulated wire, each with a 4mm plug on one end and a bare crocodile
    (alligator) clip on the other. The instructions were simple: connect them
    in series. Naturally they inserted the plugs in the sockets and took a clip
    in each hand to touch against the ends of the cell. Nothing apparently
    happened...

    From: Harry H Conover (conover@tiac.net)
    I love it!  What a maliciously

    delightful bastard!

    Reminds me of the time when, as a co-op student, I decided to check the
    resistance of the high side winding on a power company pole transformer
    using a hand-held Simpson 260 VOM (set on a low-Ohms scale).  "Odd", I
    thought to myself, "the resistance is decreasing, and rather slowly."  It
    didn't take long to be taught why the "resistance is changing", but
    painfully.

    Lessons like these are not quickly forgotten.

                                                      Harry C.

    p.s., Then there was that friend of mine who, for some long forgetten
          reason decided that he needed to measure the output voltage of
          a 15-KV, 40-Kw plate tranformer using a hand-held high-voltage
          probe on a meter.  (This is something that actually happened
          during the start-up days of the Princeton-Pennsylvania
          Accelerator back around 1964.)

          As he approached the tranformer's terminal with the probe, a
          corona discharge jumped to the well insulated probe in his hand,
          but still he dropped it.  It fell to the grounded case of the
          transformer, the discharge followed it, and the rest is history.
          (When they did a post-mortem on the transformer, although its
          windings were once rectangular to conform with the cross-section
          of its core, they were now perfectly round -- all three phases!)

physics chemistry
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    From: "S. P. Riley" <rileystp@flyernet.udayton.edu>
                                GENERAL SCIENCE 12.

    I am accident prone.  I will not deny this.  I will also not deny that I
    love science.  Science has always been a logic course for me.  Yet when
    logic, humans, and bad luck come together you get me.

    I high school biology we had to dissect a once living mouse.  Well they had
    injected the arteries with a type of red latex, and the veins with a blue
    latex.  Well when you pull them out and tie them together you can get a
    very reasonable rubber band.  The teacher couldn't figure out where all
    these red and blue rubber bands were coming from.

    In chemistry lab we always had quirt bottles full of di-water next to the
    tables.  The person using the table next to mine and I always had a battle
    with those bottles.  Well one day when I was doing an experiment he yelled
    out my name and shot the liquid at me.  Well thank God it missed me since
    the teacher replaced the di-water with sulfuric acid.  I noticed that the
    liquid was smoking and bubbling before the other guy could get off a second
    shot.

    One of the experiments was to take lighters and long test tube, filled with
    water submerged in water, and press the button on the lighter and let the
    fluid change to gas and fill the long test tube.  Well I was the first done
    with my experiment, and since the gas from the lighter is heavier than air
    I could turn it up and the gas would still be in the tube.  Well the
    teacher decided he wanted to show me a cool effect.  He lit a match and
    dropped it into the tube.  Well as everyone knows heat expands the air, and
    a lot of heat expands a lot of air.  I was picking glass out of my skin and
    cloths for a week.  After the teacher told the rest of the students not to
    do something like that two other people lit a match and dropped it into
    their tubes.

    In physics class we had a hand crank generator that we hooked up two wires
    to.  We would see who would be stupid enough to hold onto the wires the
    longest.  Well when it was my turn we put the BIG magnet on the generator,
    and hand the red neck hick with a sadistic streak on him to turn the crank.
    Well the shocks were greater than before, and then the hick decided to turn
    the crank as fast has he could.  There was so much electricity that my
    mussels locked up, and I couldn't let go.  I had to walk backwards to get
    the wires out of my hands.

    Still in high school we had a Van de Graph generator that, as an assistant,
    I hooked up.  Well we got out the old plastic crate that was six inches off
    the ground and I stood on it as another assistant turned on the generator.
    Well even before I could get my hands to the globe there was such an
    electrical charge that it traveled through me, through my shoes, and the
    six inches of air to the ground.  This did not discourage us.  We shut off
    the generator and I put my hands on the globe, and then turned it on.  I
    don't remember much of what happened, but the other assistant said that
    there were five or six discharges from the feet to the ground before having
    to unplug the generator, the switch failed.

    For some reason in chemistry class we had a massive amount of magnesium
    ribbon.  Well one day we were going to do some experiment where we had to
    scrape the corrosion off.  We were told to leave the dust from the sanding
    on the table.  Well we didn't really notice the teacher go around and
    collect the dust.  I did notice him go over to the "hot" Bunsen burner and
    fire it up.  I wish I noticed him look away for he tossed the powder into
    the flame.  The giant dark spot in my vision went away after about half an
    hour.

    I made it to college by some grace of God, and had my first physics lab.
    Remember the test of gravity how you have the paper ribbon and a mass is
    pulled down by gravity, and a sparker would leave repeated dark scorch
    marks on the ribbon.  I don't know why by my group just had to have the
    only time in the history of the lab where the sparker caught the ribbon on
    fire.  Naturally there is never a convenient fire extinguisher around.  We
    ended up blowing really hard and ended up blowing out the flaming paper.

    I worked for the chemistry lab stock room for a little bit once.  Well I
    was told to clean a pan that had some type of acid crystallized on the
    side.  Well this acid could only be dissolved with ethanol.  Since ethanol
    was a very prized in the stock room I was only permitted to use a small
    amount.  Think hard on this one.  A lot of acid dissolved in little liquid
    equals a high concentration.  That some how got on my skin.  When I felt
    the pain I proceeded to douse my skin with ethanol.  When I told my boss he
    didn't know which was worse, my wasting the ethanol or getting the acid on
    my skin.

    The latest and most painful was when I was working for the geology
    department and we needed some liquid nitrogen.  Well I knew just where to
    get some.  So taking a container with me, and going all by myself, since I
    didn't want others to know about it, I went to the liquid nitrogen tank.  I
    proceeded to fill the container.  I noticed the hose that I was using was
    becoming covered in frost, but didn't think that hard on that fact.  I
    proceed to turn off the valve.  I didn't notice that it too was covered in
    frost.  Well when I made the last turn very tight I tried to take my hand
    off the valve.  It was frozen to the valve.  Now understand this was in the
    middle of July so it was about 100 degrees out, and here I was frozen.  I
    lost multiple layers of skin that day.

    Now understand these are just a few of the many situations that I have
    gotten myself into.  Yes everyone of these are true.  Just be lucky I
    didn't include when working in the chem stock room and I discovered the
    well known (to everyone but me at that time) property of silver nitrate.
    Thank God I am going into something safe like Geology where the worst that
    I can do is kill only myself and who ever is at the bottom of a rock slide.

chemistry
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    From: "Scovis, Phil" <Phil_Scovis@academic.com>

     Rather harmless, but still fun.  Obtain a piece of magnesium wire, and
    thread it into a bunsen burner screen, and leave it for the next class.
    Ask someone in the next class if anything interesting happened during lab.

chemistry
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    From: iim98jap <iim98jap@student3.lu.se>

    Somehow we found what the mixture that was used for espionage (taking
    aerophotos during the night time) during the World War II was made of
    (contact me for details :).  The basic idea is that it reacts quicly
    releasing large ammount of bright light and in principle acts as huge
    flash.  The mixture was simple, two-component mixture and through our
    contacts and friends we did not have real problem to obtain the components.
    We maid it in remote area of summer houses some 18 km from Riga city (the
    capital of Latvia). Actually it was time before the New Year and we had
    aslo other fireworks prepared, but this one was a kind of experiment and we
    were looking forward to enjoy it wery much.  We made quite a big tight
    paper package of this stuff thinking- the bigger the better, added home
    made ignitor and burning cord, went out (it was night, aroung 11 p.m.,
    though there was half moon and stars on the sky, so it was not completely
    dark). We put the fire to the cord, left the paskage in the middle of the
    road and stepped well back.  We were expecting some real explosion, light
    sparks and stuff like this, of course.  The cord was burning, but it
    somehow took a bit longer time than we were expecting. We all (like 4
    people) were following closely the smoll flame on the cord with our sights
    when......  ..... it just became all dark.  We did not hear any explosion,
    except small "fuh!", we did not see ANY light.  The reaction was so quick
    and so damn bright that we all got blinded for several tens of seconds. We
    were blinking our eyes without seeing anything at all.  That is thing that
    we still joke about with the friends when we met.

    We realised that mixtures designed for special uses do not really fot for
    pyrotechnics... :)

    Regards, Janis

chemistry
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    From: Lars Goldschlager <lg@unete.com.ve>

    I have a quite mad very close best friend, well this friend switched to my
    same school on my suggestion when he was "taken out" of his earlier school,
    this school of mine was very very liberal (based on the sumerhill concept)
    and we had grand teachers, so these teachers did not say "no" when my
    friend choosen to do the work we all had to do for the two last years of
    highschool about powder, my friend got in all kind of tests about powder
    and finally produced what we decided to call "greenpeace powder" because I
    said it was the powder that greenpeace would use to blow up contaminating
    factories, this was because he decided to substitute the sulfur in the
    normal mixing for some neat (expensively neat) amount of powdered
    magnesium, wich produced an alkaline residue rather than an acid one, such
    residue that acording to my friend's (doubtfull) calculations shoudl mix
    with water producing Nitrogen wich should be good for the plants.... well
    we we're on the lab by ourselves (with everything on hand of course)
    testing that thing...  when he decides to do a "gas" test, wich means,
    stuffing a well lot of that into a test tube, putting a lid on it and
    putting the tube over the Bunsen.... yes I can imagine your faces
    now.... well he does it, and we duck like we were chased by the devil, and
    we wait and wait and wait and wait..... so nothing is happening, and my
    friend got slightly impacient...... and yes he decides to rise from behind
    our table to wich i started yelling "come back, come back" and certain so,
    h was two steps away from the tube when the thing blew up.... my friend was
    harmed but we tought he was, that because he was frozen like ice for
    several minutes, barely breathing, the tube's cap flew up about 10 meters
    and sqashed against the ceiling leaving an unremovable black spot in it,
    the tube itself broke in two and the lower part flew back and landed on a
    cloth on the table, this was a very think cloth that was folded in about
    eight layers, and ven when the mixture hadn't burnt completely the tube
    burnt thru the whole cloth like it as butter not even lighting it up....
    (latter on open tubes with a electronic thermometer we tested this thign to
    burn at near 630 celcius) and the whole lab was full of glass.......
    needless to say we didn't ever ever try the experiene again (still our
    teachers didn't stopped us from continuing on the experiment....).... I
    wish I had a neat story to tell about the 200g of sodium he got hold of
    next year but he just misplaced it and never foudn it again, someday his
    house will go in flames and he will find it............

chemistry
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    From: MarvinZZMartian@aol.com

     One year I managed to convince the chemistry/physics high school teacher &
    the principal (little did he know...) to allow any volunteers to turn the
    high school wing into a Halloween haunted house for the little kids.
    Anybody who did anything was going to get a lab credit.

    Some myself & one of my bus buddies did the "mad scientist" room in the
    physics room with some of the real simple old ones: sugar & sulfuric acid &
    potassium permangenate & glycerine.

    My assistant mixed the acid w the permangenate he he he, it shut the whole
    thing for the night.  It was the most incredible substance that stunk &
    burned & stained & stuck to every square inch of the ceiling, walls, floor,
    desktops, clothing & took the whole class 3 days to clean.

    The good old days.  I have a bunch of these stories.

physics
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    From: "Vinnie Greco" <vinnie_greco@hotmail.com>

     A quick and easy one...

    Spit into a flask of liquid nitrogen. After a few seconds of bubbles and
    sizzling your end product will be a nice little clear ball, similar to a
    small hailstone, but very dry at that temperature. When you pull it out
    with a pair of tongs you can handle the thing with your hands (badconductor
    of heat). Then, pick your victims. Place these little marbles in their
    pencil cases, on their lab books, drop them in their pockets, etc. They go
    unnoticed while they are solid. Then wait.

    I had so much fun 'spitting' on so many of the geeks who took lab too
    seriously!

    This prank is best when you feel all clogged up - green balls give
    fantastic results!

physics
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    From: "Redden, Brad" <bredden@westaim.com>
                                    PHYSICS 30

       For my senior year in high school we had a physics teacher who was
    really a French teacher at heart. He taught two other courses at the same
    time (it was a small school). When it came down to the last five weeks of
    school he was getting quite busy with marking in the other courses large
    projects coming in and what not. With great faith in the senior class to be
    mature.  Thought we were the one of the largest bunches of miscreants to
    come through the school in many years. Chem. class had been disarmed by
    many of our parents 20 years earlier and it's difficult to explain just how
    literal that is (about 75% of us had at least one parent attend our school
    most in a five year stint) Anyway the assignment was any project could be
    done as long as it related to class in someway, this was busy work. idol
    hands are the tool of the devil well so our busy ones. Enter weaponeering
    101 as it was dubbed in a matter of days. One of the things covered was
    trajectories. This gave birth to 3 catapults one required three people to
    carry and had to be dismantled to be moved. One crossbow powered by leaf
    springs that was almost a small ballista and a failed van de graph
    generator that was more like a tesla coil. (a big ball that shoots off
    electric arcs if you get to close) We had an arc starter from an old
    furnace I was told it was about 12 000 volts it would jump about 3 inches
    and lift you off the seat. This made for an entertaining close to a class
    that had all ready cover such entertaining topics as: You actually
    swallowed a AAA battery, What happens when you fill the lab with propane
    (some dumbass junior tried that one) How hard is it to pry 4 crazy glued
    text books apart and Does crazy glue bond sneaker rubber and floor tiles
    (very well indeed).

chemistry
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    From: Arman Frasier <armanf@alaweb.com>

    Okay here is one, in 8th grade my idiot friend siad 5 years earlier he put
    some play-doh into a bottle of tabasco sause, coem to find out that when
    obsorbed by skin (or forced into the blood with a dart) would cause numbing
    of the area, so another idiot friend of mine too a 2 liter boote of coke,
    emptied it fillled half with the liquid, put a metal plate in it some
    how. he filled the other half with water. Then came Homecoming football
    (American Football) game, he "borrowed" some dry ice and put it in the
    water helf, he used just enough (guess we wasnt that dumb if he measured
    it) and threw the numbomb as we called it over the football field, it
    exploded numbing the arms of both football teams, and completely numbing
    the cheer leaders, it was funny, though people thought it was gun fire from
    the sound of the bottle exploding and when the foot ball player and Cheer
    leaders collapsed from the sheer numbness and shock the whole area screamed
    and we ran off.

chemistry
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    From: "Geoff Needham" <geoffn@ledanet.com.au>

     Another small explosion We had just moved into a brand new lab & the board
    of directors were coming on an inspection visit.  To impress them we
    started a series of ether extractions in the new fume cupboard.  Naturally
    the lab soon filled with ether fumes but chemists get off on such things so
    no one commented.

    The chairman of the board led his party into the room & to our horror he
    was smoking a huge cigar.  A most beautiful phenomena then occurred.  A
    small ball of flame moved in slow motion from the cigar towards the fume
    cupboard, however none of the lab staff saw it arrive as we were all
    cowering behind benches before it got half way there.  The resulting
    explosion destroyed the first soxhlet apparatus, moved on to the next &
    then the next in a chain reaction this shattered the fume cupboard &
    damaged the entire end of the lab.

    Such fun, very dignified elderly men & women under chairs, lying in the
    hallway & in heaps on top of each other.  Try it sometime. I guarantee that
    you will get unlimited funding for at least three years.

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    From : tomas_thefox2003@yahoo.ie (Tomas Fuchsbauer)
    Physics aparatii in Industry :

    Ingenious use of Physics apartii in the microelectronics industry

    I won’t give the site, as this is not good policy, but this is not made up
    and DID occur...

    We were working in the 'Diffusion’ area (also known as' Confusion’ to some)
    and were carrying out repair work to some 200mm Vertical Furnaces just
    prior to Christmas that year, when one of the cleanroom staff asked us what
    we were doing. My fellow Irish colleague who was also always one for a joke
    simply replied :
    "We’re just dismantling a few of the furnaces for installation into the
    canteen kitchen to help with the cooking of the Christmas Turkey & Ham
    dinners."  He said it with a very straight face and extremely believably -
    the expression in his eyes remaining unaltered - not a hint of BS - (his
    cleanroom 'face-mask' must have greatly assisted in keeping his true
    expression under wraps). The young guy looked at us for a while during the
    work, shrugged and muttered : ", Really ?" Afterwards I found out that he
    had spread this insider information about the new high-tech cooking
    facilities quite extensively, and from then on we just couldn’t contain
    ourselves any longer. It became a team joke for weeks. Just proves yet
    again how easy it is to brainwash most of the human race with the smallest
    nonsense... Not much appears to have changed in the interim !

physics chemistry
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    From: "Justin Heisdorffer" <just_in_24@hotmail.com>

    I'm going into engineering, so during my four years of high school, I felt
    it very important to take as many science classes as possible, so from all
    those classes, I have a lot of memorable moments.
    One of the ones that stands out the most was in my Biotechnology class, my
    sophmore year.  It was mostly a lab class dealing with growing bacteria and
    had to use proper sterilization techniques.  I can't remember the name of
    any of those techniques, but they involved passing the inoculating loop
    over the flame of a bunsen burner, then scraping some bacteria up with it
    and putting the bacteria on a petri dish.  Two interesting occurrences
    happened in this process.
    One one particular lab, we were growing 3 different kinds of bacteria on
    one plate, so we divided the plates into fourths and used the extra
    quadrant for a control.  One of my friends got the inocculation process
    wrong and sterilized the loop after he had scooped some of the bacteria
    onto it.  So, of the four quadrants, the only one that grew any bacteria
    was the one one that wasn't supposed to (the control).  The other result of
    this little project is that he contaminated all the test tubes of bacteria
    that everyone else was using, so everyone else's experiements got messed up
    too.
    The other interesting experiment in that class was when we were supposed to
    be growing bacteria again.  Of course, this was toward the end of the
    school year and growing bacteria had gotten a little boring, so we were
    playing with other lab tools.  We stained eachother with all of the stains
    that make cells visible under a microscope and basically never go away.
    Handily enough, these came in nice little squirt bottles that made it
    obvious that they were made for this purpose.  During this lab, we also
    found that the tongs in the lab were made of copper.  From this we learned
    that, when burnt, copper gives off a brilliant green flame.  Also learned
    that teachers WILL expel students, even near the end of the school year.

    My favorite class was Mr. Squire's chemistry class.  He was noted for hard
    tests and homework, but that was just the kind of class I liked.  We did a
    few labs, but he always made sure we used proper safety precautions.
    The most memorable moment in high school was when we did our thermite
    experiment.  We took a clay flower pop, filled it up with the thermite
    mixture and lit it with a sparkler so that it would drip out the hole in
    the bottom into a box of sand.  We did this outside in the parking lot, as
    he had previously had troubles with it inside and the experiment was banned
    from being done indoors.  So, we did the experiment in the parking lot and
    the thermite melted right through the sand, the box, and the parking lot.
    Later that year, we were doing a lab with an extremely weak solution of
    Hydrochloric Acid (<<1M).  My lab partner was afraid to work with any
    concentration, so I had to do the lab work and she wrote the results.  We
    had a test-tube full of HCl, and a rubber stopper with a peice of magnesium
    ribbon attatched to it that we were supposed to shove into the test tube to
    watch the production of hydrogen gas.  When I jammed the stopper into the
    test tube, it sprayed the acid solution all over the room.  I couldn't help
    but laugh, even though i was soaked with the acid.  The teacher and a
    couple of other students couldn't stop laughing  Everyone else freaked out.
    My lab partner got a few drops on her and kinda freaked, but wasn't nearly
    as afraid the next experiment.  For some reason, she didn't want me to work
    with acid anymore.  Go figure!  The best thing that happened from this
    experiment is that my lab partn! er still remembers me, even though she
    hasn't seen me since we got out of that class.  Whenever I see her mom, she
    asks "Hey, weren't you Renee's chemistry partner?  She still asks about you
    a lot."  So, I guess there was chemistry between us.  Okay, bad pun.

    The next year, Mr. Squire retired, so I had Mr. Long for my Advanced
    Chemistry and Physics classes.  Lots of interesting experiences in those
    classes.
    In physics, we were doing an experiment with little matchbox cars and a
    track and ramp.  I don't know how that related to physics at all, but my
    group decided to make it more interesting, so between the take off and
    landing ramps, we decided to make the car go through a ring of fire.  But,
    we couldn't figure out how to do that, so we just set up a bunsen burner
    and decided that was good enough.  Then we got caught and sent to the
    office.
    We also took a van de graph generator (one of those things that generates
    static electricity) and wired it to the doorknob so that when the Mr. Long
    came in, he would get a nice little shock.  However, he was in the
    chemistry closet watching us and made the kid who set it up touch it after
    it had charged up for several minutes.  Another time, we stole the van de
    graph and did that to another teacher.  Mr. Long is the one who got in
    trouble for it though and it started a feud between the math teachers and
    the science teachers that lasted the rest of the year.
    One of my classmates was always filling pop bottles with the gas for the
    bunsen burners and squeezing it in people's faces to watch their reaction
    to the nauxious smelling gas.  One day, I remembered I had a lighter in my
    pocket, so when he squeezed it in my face, I dared him to do it again, and
    when he did, BOOM!!!!  Actually, no explosion, just a quick flash of flame.
    I was disappointed, but it was more effective to get him to quit doing that
    to people than the 100 times Mr. Long threatened to kick him out of class.
    In our advanced chem. class, one of the students was incredibly afraid of
    acids, so we labled a bottle "6M HCl" and filled it up with water before he
    got to class one day.  When he got there, we proceeded to play catch with
    it and managed to spill some on his books.  He freaked out...but not as
    much as when we poured it into test tubes and took shots of it.
    Another day in advanced chem, we took his old computer and wrote a program
    that went had a loop that asked you "who is the pimp master?" and when you
    answered, it displayed "dylan scott (another student in my class) is the
    biggest pimp in the world"  Of course, we couldn't remember how to exit a
    loop, so it just displayed that over and over until you turned the computer
    off.  Mr. Long was pretty mad about that.
    Another day, we had bunsen burners out and were bored with our lab, so
    someone grabbed a handful of magnesium powder and threw it on the burner.
    That was pretty cool, so we did it again, only this time his hand was
    sweaty and some of the powder stuck to it and burnt him.
    We also did a few demonstrations, including a grape cannon (similar to a
    potato gun, only smaller) which we shot at targets outside (targets
    included the gym teacher and several p.e. students who were walking the
    track).  We made an acetylene cannon that shot foam Nerf balls so we could
    shoot inside and really loaded it up with the ingredients for acetylene
    (calcium carbide and water), waited a minute for it to make enough gas, and
    lit it.  The ball went through the cieling in one place and there's a black
    spot where the flame shot out of the barrel.
    The next year, our school had a NEW chemistry teacher again.

    My class was well-behaved, but a bunch of pyromaniacs. We had 3 science
    teachers retire and two others re-write their curricula to take fire/open
    flame out of as many labs as possible.

physics
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    From: "Knight, William B EM1 (BUPERS)" <william.b.knight@navy.mil>
    Being in the nuclear navy and operating the reactors on the submarines, we often would get very bored with the usuall humdrum of standing watch. This often would lead to some intense pranks that stories of made out of. A couple I have heard of but never actually experienced are as follows:

    1. Call out on the shipwide announcing system that the doc is needed in the engine room. Later spread the story that a young Ensign got his finger cut off because it was stuck in the reactor when it started up.

    2. During mess time, have 3 or 4 of your fellow "nukes" (what we call ourselves) dress up in the yellow Radiation Control suits and break open a few glow sticks and spill them all over the suits. Then run screaming through the mess deck that there has been a spill and then just watch...

    Ahh...those were the days

New after last time posted (February 28, 2004) physics
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    From: neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld)

       Another radio station prank took place on April Fool's Day. They
    announced that the phone company would be cleaning the dirt out of the
    phone lines that afternoon. They do this, it seems, by blowing air into the
    wires in the switching station. The problem is that the dirt comes out of
    the earpiece and mouthpiece of the telephone, and could dirty the rugs or
    furniture in your house. Consequently, the phone company asks that the good
    citizens please get plastic baggies and put them over the handsets of the
    telephones to protect their belongings.

       Stores reported a run on plastic bags, and the phone company made the
    radio station retract the original claim.

       I've always felt that the retraction should have been handled this way:
    "The phone company would like us to tell you that our earlier message
    concerning the blowing of dirt out of the phone lines was incorrect. The
    phone company does not, repeat NOT, blow into the telephone wires to clean
    out the dirt. Anybody with any understanding of the way the system operates
    would know that they suck the dirt out."

       Alas, the retraction was serious and factual. What's this world coming
    to anyway?

New after last time posted (February 28, 2004) physics
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    From: "George Maxwell" <gm137@york.ac.uk>

    A great way of getting through boring practicals: We squirted acetone on
    the backs of our hands, and brushed them against a lit bunsen. The acetone
    lit up impressively and burned for about twenty seconds, but because it
    evaporates as it gets warm, our hands remained intact. This was a
    particularly popular trick when visiting parents or prospective students
    were visiting (complete with hysterical screaming and panic).

next page | Index | Comments and Contributions

#### Subsections

- 12. pranks and accidents - general
- 12.1 mathematics
- 12.2 burning metals
- 12.3 accidents

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